I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



iff. ■• ^^ 



|Ui\ITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



f 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



CAMBRIDGE : 

PRINTED BY METCALFE AND PALMER 

FOR MACMILLAN AND Co. 

IConUon : GEORGE bell, 186, Fleet street. 
^XforU : J. H. PARKER. 

IBttblin: hodges & smith. 

lEton : E. P. WILLIAMS. 

lEHinburg]^: edmonston & douglas. 
€ilaSgOto : JAMES maclehose. 



THE 



RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



. ^ O- 



u//^w 



*^Sms ilia (religio Cheistiana) contenia est viribtis, et veritatis 

proprice fundaminibus nititur: nee spoliatur vi sua, etiamsi 7iullum habeat 
vindicem : imino si lingtiw omnes contrafaciant, contraque nita7itur, et ad 
fidem illius abrogandam consensionis unitce animositate conspirent." 

Arnobius. 



MACMILLAN & GO. 

1855. 



PREFACE. 



When these Tracts were projected It was intended 
that they should embrace the principal subjects that 
belong to the modem argument concerning the truth 
of the Christian system; and I then believed that I 
should be able to carry out my purpose at short and 
regular intervals. I have not found it possible to do 
this; and in fact many months have separated the 
Second of these publications from the Third; nor 
ought I now to believe that, at any time* to which 
I could pledge myself, I shall be able to resume my 
task. 

Better than an attempt to refute, one by one, the 
captious and nugatory objections that have lately been 
urged in justification of Disbelief, would be — as I 
think — the establishing an intelligible and defensible 
principle of Biblical Interpretation, from a misappre- 
hension of which such objections — one and all, derive 
the semblance of importance which they may possess. 
Until this be done it would seem to me not merely 



VI PREFACE. 

a waste of time to follow and reply to these futile 
cavils, but a logical mistake, inasmuch as they 
should be dealt with comprehensively, by determining 
a previous question. 

Effectively to set the Christian argument clear of 
the entanglements that still impede its progress would 
be an arduous, but hopeful work, which I should 
rejoice to see taken up by those competent to the 
labom^: — that is to say, on the supposition that the 
Christian community is at present prepared calmly to 
listen to a course of reasoning which, while it would 
be in a genuine sense religious^ and would involve 
no risk to orthodoxy, must fearlessly demolish super- 
stitions that have grown up around Holy Scripture 
in the course of many lienturies. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 
Christianity in relation to its ancient and modern antagonists 1 

England the fittest arena for the Christian argument . 25 

The Religious condition of the Roman world in the times of 

Alexander Severus .... 39 

The Transition-state of the nations around the Mediterranean 
in the period between the reigns of Trajan and Alexander 
Severus, not to be understood without assuming the truth 
of Christianity . . . , .54 

The same subject .... 60 

The Roman necessity for persecuting the Church; and the 

Christian necessity for enduring that persecution , 68 

The Martyr Church wrought out the germinating principle of 

the modern Civilization . . . . 79 

The Relation between modern Science and systems of religious 
opinion — not the same as that between the Ancient Phi- 
losophy and Christianity . . . .96 
The Question of Christianity is determinable . . 113 
Classification of the Books of the New Testament in relation to 

the present argument . . . .128 

General Conclusion as to the Non- Supernatural Epistles 172 

The Seven apostolic Epistles which affirm or allude to Miracles 179 
Conclusion as to the Seven Epistles which affirm Miracles 211 

The Force of Congruity in relation to Christianity and its 

Miracles . . . . . 220 

The alternative— Christianity or Atheism . . . 241 

The Three purposes of Christ's Mission . . 259 

The First Intention of Christ's Mission, as attested by Miracles 267 
The Second Intention of Christ's Mission, as attested by Miracles 315 
The Third Intention of Christ's Mission, as attested by Miracles 349 
The Cycles of Christianity . . . .363 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



Our conversations of late have issued in 
opening interminable questions, on the right hand and 
on the left, but hitherto they have not brought us to 
a conclusion on any one subject. There has always 
been common ground whence we might take our start, 
and we have been able to keep company some way 
on the road; but soon the one or the other has gone 
off, drawing the immediate argument after him toward 
some wholly new region. 

You will easily recal instances of this sort of wan- 
dering, which, while it has seemed to do violence to 
logic, has obeyed — so we have felt it — the call of a 
deep moral necessity. The chance of the hour has 
given us our first impulse ; but a law of thought not 
to be resisted, has carried us forward from that for- 
tuitous point toward an miknown centre upon which all 
thought converges. The Newspaper may have given 
rise to an earnest discussion, touching the condition of 
the labouring classes, manufacturing or rural; thence 
onward we have gone till we found ourselves encircled 

B 



2 THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

by the most abstruse questions, in approaching which 
the depths of* Theology were in front of us. We 
have debated the principles of Taxation: thence has 
a path opened itself into the subject of the moral 
relationship of governments towards" the people ; and 
thence onWai'd agaiti toward the problem of Religious 
Establishments. We have incidentally mentioned some 
point of Biblical criticism, and have gone on toward 
subjects, not unconnected indeed therewith, but of in- 
finitely greater importance than can belong to any 
such question* 

In a word^ to approach what one might call surface 
questions, has always shown us that an interior be- 
neath it was to be first explored. Or if the interior 
were brought under discussion^ its many results and 
issues carried us over an unlimited expanse upon the 
field of practical science. 

This incessant wandering We must not impute to 
ourselves altogether as a fault. If in these instances 
we had been less desultory, and more logical, we 
should have paid respect to the forms of argument- 
ation, only in proportion as we had disregarded those 
relationships that are more real, and that now are felt 
to be so by all men* 

This circuit-going in all directions, at what point 
soever serious controversy or incidental conversation 
takes its start, is the marked feature of the times pre- 
sent ; and it has^ as I think, not only a deep meaning, 
but a good, or as we say, an auspicious meaning. 
Conversation among intelligent men, and the literature 



THE RESTORATION OP BELIEF. 6 

of the day, show the same characteristic; and as we 
cannot fail to notice it, we should not fail to gather its 
import. Is it not just now as if an invisible tyranny 
were driving the minds of men onward and onward, 
or in perpetual circuits, until they shall have become 
spent in fruitless courses over the unenclosed fields of 
speculation ? 

If you ask what this discursiveness means, and 
what will be its end^ — I think it shows that now at 
length the true step forward toward a more sure 
agreement and a better understanding, at least among 
the educated classes of the community, has actually 
been taken; and that we and others, including many 
from whom we most differ, have by this time gone 
some way forward on a road which it will not be 
necessary hereafter for ourselves^ or for our successors, 
to retrace. To look abroad upon the world of opinion, 
in this country, or elsewhere, what one sees might 
seem to resemble the hurrying hither and thither of 
the sparks upon a burned paper; all which sparks, 
bright as they are, are soon to find their rest in ashes 
and blackness. Yet not so, I think, in the social sys- 
tem; for here the sparks are showing a tendency in 
one and the same direction; or, like the falling stars 
and meteors of an autumn sky, they all give notice of 
their bearing upon the great planetary movements. 

You will be told by some around us — and they 
are men whose judgment well deserves to be regarded 
— that they have seen the end of several movements 
not less promising than this to which we are linked, 

b2 



4 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and that no notable result in which we could rejoice, 
has marked the return of men's minds to their cus- 
tomary inaction. 

I must adhere to my hopefulness so long as 
I see clearly a ground of expectation that what is 
bright is at hand. It has come to be felt and 
seen, and to be acknowledged too, on all sides, that 
TRUTH, in relation to any particular subject, touching 
immediately or remotely the well-being of men — 
either the individual man, or the social — can be only 
one portion of, or one aspect of, universal truth ; 
and that if we would secure ourselves against mis- 
chievous mistakes and illusions as to that single sub- 
ject, w^hatever it may be, we must know, not merely 
the whole of itself, but what it borders upon ; and 
then the bordering of those remoter neighbours, one 
upon another, and so onward and round about must 
we advance, until we have fairly made the circuit of 
all things, or of all things which it is granted to man 
to measure ^and compass. 

This feeling — this acknowledgment — in professing 
which all are agreed, runs parallel with the axiom of 
Natural Philosophy, namely, that there are no insu- 
lated sciences ; but that all investigations of nature, 
and all paths followed in the abstract sciences, tend 
toward a centre, and are only so many independent 
contributions toward a consentient system, which will 
at length present itself as a harmony, and which will 
then assign its place to every item of that knowledge 
w^hich we shall have made our own, concerning the 
Material Universe. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 5 

The perception we have acquired concerning the inter- 
relation and absolute dependence, one upon another, 
of moral, religious, and political questions, has not 
been borrowed from the Physical Sciences; nor is it 
an inference that has been carried over from one side 
of philosophy to the other: for although, In its rise, 
it has been nearly contemporaneous, it has had its 
own and its proper source, springing up from within 
the intellectual world. It is a feeling- that has flowed 
from a far deeper mode of thinking, on all such sub- 
jects, than has hitherto prevailed; and it has shown 
the presence of a more serious desire, or, one might 
say, an impatience, an anxiety, almost an agony, im- 
pelling men to reach, if it be possible, a solid ground 
of belief. 

It is natural and inevitable that this urgent feeling 
should drive men in from the surface of all subjects, 
and compel them to dig, and still to dig, until, from 
all sides, they have come to encounter each other^ 
working in the same shafts, and pursuing the same 
seams and veins of thought. From these underground 
encounters, startling as they are when they bring those 
who beneath the upper sky are declared adversaries, 
face to face in the mine, and so near to the very pith 
of the world, will lead (so I must profess to think) 
to a common understanding, to a belief generally, if 
not universally assented to, and to a CONCLUSION, 
once for all arrived at, and which thenceforward will, 
with its inferences, be brought to bear upon every 
practical question that can be thought to stand related 



6 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

to it in morals, politics, and education, as well as 
Religion. 

We have not however, as yet, advanced quite 
abreast on the two highroads of Philosophy — the phy- 
sical and the intellectual (or moral and religious) ; for 
on the former a rule is well understood and is univer- 
sally obeyed, which on the latter is but dimly seen^ 
or is perpetually broken. 

What I mean is this — that in all departments of the 
physical sciences, both abstract and applicate, and on 
all fields of accumulated industry — natural history, for 
instance — every one, every inquirer, every reasoner, 
every collector of facts, is left to pursue his path in 
his own mode, and is held to be exempt from all 
interference on the part of others; as if what one 
had learned, or was teaching, could supersede, or might 
interdict the inquiries of another. Although, in the 
issue, there will be One Philosophy, and although 
there should be fellowship among the labourers, none 
are to put bars across the paths of their companions. 
This sort of jealousy, as it would be groundless, so 
must it be fruitless in the end; and meantime it 
would be mischievous. Nothing of this sort is ever 
thought of, or attempted, in the world of physical 
science. 

So much as this cannot be alleged in behalf of those 
branches of philosophy and of learning which touch 
human nature at the core. On this ground attempts 
are often made to intercept the progress of inquiry in 
some one direction, as if it might disturb what has 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 7 

been ascertained on another. Too often — and we are 
all more or less in fault — we carry inferences over from 
one field to another; or, we are in too great haste 
so to do; for undoubtedly, in the end, all infer- 
ences, all deductions, will interlace and join on one 
to another. 

Let me state the case in some such way as that 
in which it often meets us in these times. I am (let 
us suppose it) addicted to antiquarianism — to historical 
criticism — to ethnological philology, and to the kindred 
subjects. You perhaps are conversant with political 
economy, or the like social interests, and you amuse 
yourself also with geology. Now I have convinced 
myself in my own modes of inquiry, and on my 
own proper ground, that things are so and so ; or 
that the transactions of remote ages have been truth- 
fully reported. You ought not then to come in, and 
with a supercilious air tell me that I may as w^ell 
spare myself so much learned toil, and that you will 
be happy to save me the whole of my expenditure 
in midnight oil; for that you, in your department, 
have ascertained, beyond doubt, that I have been 
deceiving myself, and am blindly misleading others, 
This is insufferable : — it is not scientific ; it is an out^ 
rage committed upon the commons of Philosophy. If 
you say you do but retaliate; I reply I will take 
care to give you in future no cause of offence in this 
way, and I shall disregard any such interferences on 
your part. 

It is easy to foresee what those occasions are in 



8 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

which I am likely to claim protection under the shield 
of this rule of our modem Philosophy. The rale 
itself is a main article in the Magna Charta of our 
intellectual liberties, and whoever infringes these 
privileges, forfeits his claim to be much listened to, 
even on his own ground. 

I do not say that we, on our side — I mean the 
side of Religious Belief — have not in any instances 
been blameworthy in this same manner — all parties 
have been persecutors in their time: but I think I 
shall show that acts of attempted interference, as well 
as argumentative arrogance and intolerance, have of 
late shown themselves on the other side in a tenfold 
proportion. Too much, and too often, we on our 
side have cowered before the unseemly bearing of 
those who have assailed us. If there has been any 
of this giving ground, it is more than enough, it is 
more than was due ; and it is time that we should 
repel all such violences. When I say repel^ I mean — 
not yield an inch to those who thus offend against 
the acknowledged maxims of what may be called the 
modern philosophical courtesy. 

Not only on my side would I wholly abstain from 
the language of intimidation or of interdiction — not 
only not say, ''you must not approach this or that 
subject, for the ground is sacred;" but rather would 
invite every one to follow up his own course of inquiry 
in the mode that best suits himself. If he does so 
in a manner that is unseemly, flippant, inconclusive; 
or if he so writes and speaks as to betray an arrogant 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 9 

and captious temper, and a sinister purpose, in doing 
so he provides against himself a most effective sort 
of reply, and I need not give myself any trouble on 
his behalf. 

As to what is written or spoken ingenuously and 
sincerely, or as we say " in good faith," with the 
avowed intention to loosen or subvert Religious Belief, 
I will never call the author of such utterances my 
enemy. So firm and thorough is my own belief, 
that I can well afford to be thus charitable, — nay 
more: although in regard to the immediate welfare 
of many I must deeply deplore what I see to be 
taking place around me, in all circles, I have a perfect 
confidence in the issue, after a time, of the intellectual 
movement which is now in progress, so far as it is 
impelled by honestly intended men. If not everywhere, 
yet in this country, such a restoration of Religious 
Belief as could not have resulted from any other 
conjunction of causes, will be its consequence. 

In what I now propose to do there is included 
no intention to take in hand any recent book or books, 
as if to give it or them an answer: this would be 
to enter upon an endless and unavailing labour. I 
am not ignorant of what has lately been written ; 
but I shall pursue my own track of thought in my 
own mode, and leave others to do the like in theirs. 

If I think or speak of any man as an adveesaky, 
I do so in a sense purely logical; and I do not allow 
the word to bring with it into my bosom any of those 
feelings with which, in fact, I regard the princijoles 



10 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

he IS endeavouring to establish. These principles I 
utteriy condemn, and the influence he has acquired 
over the minds of others I would gladly destroy; but 
toward himself I harbour no unkindly sentiment: how 
should I do so when I think of him as struggling, 
without help or hope, in the grasp of perplexities 
w^ith which every thoughtful and seriously-minded man 
has had to contend, at some stage of his course, 
or does still contend in times of mental lassitude. 
Those who have suffered no anguish in their past 
history, and who have passed through no hours of 
agony, are men (enviable perhaps ! but) with whom 
neither my adversary nor myself should have nearly 
so much sympathy as we should with each other. 

It is much to be wished that those who at this 
moment are assailing Religious Belief, would deny 
themselves the poor and cheap gratification, in which 
they almost all of them give themselves free leave 
to indulge, that of calling the adherents aiad advocates 
of Belief — '' fanatics." 

And yet, perhaps, this seemingly arrogant practice 
should be pardoned in those guilty of it, inasmuch 
as it does not necessarily spring from an intolerant 
temper, or personal malignity; but comes only from 
the felt necessity of the position in which those, on 
that side, have placed themselves : for if indeed those 
whose belief these writers assail are not "fanatics;" 
if, on the contrary, they, or many of them, are as 
well informed and as highly cultured and as capable 
of reasoning as themselves, if they are equally serious 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 11 

and honest, and in a word, are everyway as " good 
men," and all the while are believers, then is Belief 
proved to be reasonable ; for reasonable men profess 
it, and the contrary assumption falls to the ground; 
then is Belief that conclusion which will be accepted 
and rested in, after full inquiry, by the great majority 
of minds in a soimd state. So it will be, those seasons 
of reaction excepted, like the present, in which a re- 
vulsion is taking place and which is attributable to 
obvious causes. 

Whoever calls me a fanatic, simply because I be- 
lieve, puts into my hand a lever by means of which 
I shall upheave his stronghold. 



Great arguments, we have said, cannot be long held 
apart, or permanently disjoined. As this is true in 
natural philosophy, so especially is it true in whatever 
touches human nature and the social welfare of man, 
morally or religiously. It is not easy to disconnect 
even questions of politics with religious principles; for 
through the medium either of questions concerning 
Religious Establishments, or of Religious Liberty, or 
Public Education, the one set of principles interlocks 
itself with the other. 

Take up what subject we may among the many 
which now engage attention, one must reckon upon 
the entailed necessity of passing on from that point to 
its next neighbour, and so forward. Nevertheless a 
choice may be open to us always as to the starting- 
point that is taken. 

Of some of these arguments it may be said that 
they possess an inherent logical title to precedence : 
they present themselves as first to be disposed of in 
the order of dialectic sequence. For other weighty 
questions it may be pretended that, if determined iu 
a certain mode, they bring all other argumentation, 
all balancing of probabilities, aU inquiries concerning 



THE EESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 13 

possible improvements or progress, to a dead stop ; 
they throw a pall over the world, and its fruitless 
agitations. 

Again, there are questions affecting the welfare of 
classes which cry for instant consideration, if, indeed, 
hearts of flesh beat in om^ bosoms. Of what account 
are dogmas, or principles of any sort, when placed in 
comparison with practical measures, tending to assuage 
physical suffering, or to gladden the homes of thou- 
sands of our fellow-men? Such pleas are good; but 
they need not overrule om* present purposes. Let 
every one take to the path that best suits himself. 

If a preference is given to subjects not of this lat- 
ter urgent sort, and which affect the welfare, not of 
classes of men, but of men universally, we may then 
make our choice in adopting one of two methods — the 
first of which may be called the German, and the 
other the English mode. 

The German mind inclines to begin at the begin- 
ning, rather than to seize the main point midway, or to 
catch it in its concrete form. Whatever it has to do 
with, although it be a surface question, it takes a pre- 
liminary plunge among the most profound abstractions. 
A metaphysical, more than a scientific, law of thought 
prevails with it, and the simplest adjustment of things 
about us must show its reason, as related to a theory 
of the universe, which, perhaps, has scarcely yet fledged 
itself, as newly broken forth from chaos. 

Not so the English mind, which has more inclina- 
tion toward the concrete than the abstract. At least 



14 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

we must say it seeks the practical, loves whatever is 
well-defined and certain, and never hesitates to accept 
and use what is sure and at hand, although much room 
there may be left for argument on the a jyriori side. 

In the present instance, then, I must make my 
choice of a preliminary subject in compliance with the 
tendency of the English mind* 

At this time, when all things are brought into doubt, 
if there be in sight a path that is open and straight 
before us^ — if there be, on any sidcj ground that feels 
firm to the foot, — -if quite near at hand there are objects 
that are palpable,^ — if around us we may see what we 
have knoTrn to be good, and which is our own; then 
upon such a path will we set forward, upon such ground 
will we first essay to tread, such objects will we grasp, 
and to such possessions will we assert our right. Thence, 
and from such ground^ will we adventure forward and 
outward, toward the dark unknown. 

I shall here be stopped by an exception taken against 
any renewal of the endeavour to link Eeligion to His- 
tory, or to send us back for our faith and morals to past 
ages. I must do so from the very necessity of the case. 
Belief and History God has joined, nor shall man, 
to the end of time, succeed in effecting a divorce. Re- 
ligion, disjoined from History, is a flickering candle, 
held in the hand of one who looks back upon utter 
darkness behind him, and looks into the blackness of 
darkness in front of him. 

But beside this inherent necessity of the case, there 
meets us an adjunctive necessity for taking the same 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 15 

course, and for travelling back to ages past. Even 
if Belief and History were not thus wedded. Dis- 
belief has its equally firm hold upon antiquity. In 
every form of it, it has its ancestry, and it must not 
ask now to be spoken to as if we had not already, 
and long ago, made acquaintance with it. 

Is it, indeed, to be reckoned as a fault, or is it a 
disqualification for engaging in argument, to have be- 
come, in some degree, conversant with the fortunes of 
man in past time? If not, then this species of ac- 
complishment brings with it an irresistible feeling, 
prompting one to recognize in what is recent, the 
very counterpart of what is of remote origin. 

It is not merely this, that the special objections 
which have been of late urged against Christianity, 
against the Old Testament Books, and the New, are 
all substantially the same as those which Origen and 
the early Apologists encountered and refuted. This is 
not all; for those speculations, more deep and wdde, 
more sweeping and formidable in aspect, which just 
now are redressed and presented as the ripened fruits 
of the human mind, which at length is freeing itself 
from its thraldom of centuries — these same speculations, 
fresh complexioned as they are, diff'er in little, beside 
their wording, from the profundities of the Oriental 
and Alexandrine philosophy, as uttered and edited by 
the several classes of Grnostics, Manichees, and others. 
If then Belief carries us back to antiquity, so does 
Misbelief; and we cannot refuse to follow a double 
guidance, that is sure in both instances. 



16 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

As a proper preliminary, therefore, to any inquiries 
that may touch the philosophy of human nature, or 
implicate what is abtruse in theology, I must persist 
in the course I have chosen ; and shall essay to tread 
upon solid ground as far forward as it offers itself to 
the foot. History is solid ground; or, to exclude ex- 
ceptions, let us say that, within the region it embraces, 
perfectly solid ground is discoverable in all directions. 
This is manifestly the case when certain historic po- 
sitions are brought into comparison, as to their demon- 
strative value, with any assumed principles of abstract 
science (not mathematical). It is certain that the 
Normans brought the Saxons under their sway in the 
eleventh century; but it is questionable whether a 
chivalrous race will always succeed in vanquishing an 
agricultural and a trading people. It Is certain that 
Augustus established and consolidated a despotism 
upon the ruins of that republic. In the attempt to 
maintain which Brutus pointed his sword against 
Caesar, and in despair of restoring which he fell 
upon It himself. But it may be doubted whether a 
republican government, such as that of ancient Rome, 
necessarily finds its end and issue In the hands of an 
autocrat. It Is more. certain that Socrates swallowed 
hemlock by the vote of his fellow-citizens, than It is 
that a people, like the Athenians, of that age must 
have been taught to listen to and admire Plato, be- 
fore they could tolerate teaching such as that of 
Socrates. 

But now, although matters of history do possess 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 17 

this absolute and this comparative certainty when 
placed beside abstruse or abstract principles; and al- 
though it be true that no inferences from those prin- 
ciples can ever be admitted to abate a jot of the 
certainty of what is certain in history, this relative 
value of the two species of evidence will not be seen 
by all minds alike. On the contrary, some minds from 
want of culture, some from an irresistible propensity 
toward paradox, some from a vague and di'eamy un- 
fixedness of temper, will always fly off from the bet- 
ter evidence, and betake themselves to the worse. 

With many, the most misty abstractions which look 
well at a distance are eagerly pursued : matters of fact, 
irresistibly evident, are scouted or forgotten. Culture 
has much to do with that faculty of the understanding 
on which history lays a firm hold. Apart from a 
certain amount of culture, we do not find that history, 
as a reality past, comes home to the intellectual con- 
sciousness. Hence springs a disadvantage attaching, 
in the nature of things, to the labours of those who 
aim to impart an historic belief to the masses of the 
people, in the way of definite proof. The process 
finds an indispensable quality wanting in those who 
are the subjects of it: hence too, of course, comes 
that poor advantage which is snatched at by those 
whose aim it is to loosen an historic, belief from the 
minds of the same classes. 

There is nothing of arrogance in what is here 
alleged. Every educated man, whether preacher, 
lecturer, or teacher, in any line, scientific, literary, or 

C 



18 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

professional, well knows, and constantly feels, that, 
do his utmost, it is but a fragment of his own vivid 
perceptions of his subject that he can lodge in the 
reason and the imagination of his imperfectly in- 
structed hearers. Therefore will it always be an easy 
task, in dealing with such, to dislodge materials that 
have no cement, and to strew the ground with the 
ruins of a structure that has not settled down on its 
foundations, and has no coherence. Because it is so 
easy to do this, writers who are impatient to win no- 
toriety, and who would fain be followed by troops of 
disciples, address themselves, without scruple, to those 
whose consent, when obtained, has no value ; and whose 
plaudits should make a wise and sincere man blush. 

In all departments of knowledge it is the RESULTS 
that are for the many ; but the PROCESS through which 
results have been reached are for the few. Especially 
must it be so in the departments of history and criti- 
cism. Results may be rendered into the vernacular; 
and when thus translated they become public property. 
Processes of inquiry are carried forward in symbol, and 
these signs always imply that a knowledge is already 
possessed, ten times outmeasuring that to which the 
bare symbol gives expression. The imperfectly edu- 
cated suffer no real damage on this ground, so long 
as they are not. tampered with by sophists. Where the 
Press, the Pulpit, the Platform, the Class-room, are 
quite free, popular incompetency, as to matters of sci- 
ence or of learning, as it cannot bo much abused 
by the privileged, so should it not be wrought upon, 
flattered, and cajoled by ambitious declalmers. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 19 

There is a ripened condition of the faculties, there 
is a state of plenary consciousness toward the things, 
the persons, the events of past time, which is the fruit 
of high culture and of life-long habits. This con- 
sciousness, this mental existence, carried back into the 
heart of antiquity, supersedes what, in a logical sense, 
may be required in the way of Evidences and Proofs. 

A man sits surrounded with the books of all ages : 
among these he has passed the best years of his life. 
He has gone in and out among them: through their 
very substance he has made a path for himself, in the 
course of methodical study ; and with these he has con- 
versed, discursively, as accident might lead him. Now 
we may imagine these his companions to be set out 
in chronological perspective on his tables and carpet, 
right and left, each ascending to its date. Thus placed, 
they are so many candles lit, shedding their beams 
over the expanse of centuries, up to the remotest eras. 
Many deep shadows still rest upon spots and spaces of 
this landscape ; nevertheless, wherever the light does 
fall, the outlines of things are perfectly defined, and 
the colours are bright. 

Besides, as the books are phosphorescent in the 
view of their possessor, so are the multifarious con- 
tents of the cabinets around him : so are the antique 
busts that occupy the brackets : and, '' as face answer- 
eth to face in a glass," so do the visages and the 
legends of medallions and of sculptures answer to, in- 
terpret, and sustain the pages of the historians, poets, 
philosophers, of the corresponding times. Taken al- 

C2 



20 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

together, or considered in their aggregate effect, these 
accumulated materials give a familiarity and an assu- 
rance to the historic consciousness which does not rate 
lower than does the feeling as to any class of objects 
that are not actually present to the senses. 

Yet how much of this feeling will it be possible for 
this same man of culture to impart to one whose edu- 
cation has been elementary only? Not a thousandth 
part of it ; and if the recipient of such a communica- 
tion, along with an ordinary measure of native intel- 
ligence, brings with him a smack of conceit; if, in his 
case, ignorance, instead of being simply negative, has 
gone into the positive form of a shrew^d scepticism, 
then the bringing forward of book-evidence and of 
antiquarian corroborations may be found to have pro- 
duced the very contrary of their proper effect. This 
man, who is one " not soon imposed upon," had come 
forward apprehensive that he should perhaps be robbed 
by force of his disbelief: instead of this, he has seen 
and heard nothing that he has really understood ; and 
he departs with his reason confused, and his vanity 
entire. 

What then is the inference hence resulting? It is 
just this — that, knowing these things, the well-informed, 
the honestly-intending, the seriously-minded, will scorn 
the easy triumph of trampling in the dust the Re- 
ligious Belief of the people — the xmeducated and the 
half-educated. 

Do I say this because I Inwardly mistrust my ar- 
gument, and shrink from the light, and foresee what 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 21 

must be the issue of an open discussion ? I shall show 
you that any such surmise as this, on your part, if 
you entertain it, is wholly unfounded. What I shrink 
from is not light, but darkness; what I am afraid of 
is not the brightness of day and the fresh breezes of 
the upper skies ; — what I am afraid of is that choke- 
damp of popular ignorance, into which the assailants 
of Religious Belief shall not tempt me to descend in 
pursuit of them. 

Besides, to follow severally, those who of late have 
assailed the Christian Belief of the people, in the way 
of reply, would be, on our part, to descend from our 
true position, and implicitly to give way to an utterly 
false idea of Christianity itself. We should thus come 
to think of it as a something artificial and fragile, 
which the bringing forward of objections, difficulties, 
flaws on its surface, this and that, ten, twenty, a 
hundred doubts, might and must destroy. We should 
then feel as if Christianity were a casting of that sort 
(as founders say) in which there is such a condition 
of internal tension by imequal cooling — such a strain 
upon the interior coherence of particles, that, if you 
do but scratch the smlface with a nail, or break off a 
corner, the whole flies into atoms. 

This is very much the feeling with which one rises 
from the perusal, not merely of books written to im- 
pugn Christianity, but often of books written to de- 
fend it. This idea of the matter in hand is, I say, 
wholly a mistaken notion. The anxiety that springs 
from it, and which disturbs so much the minds of 



22 THE RESTORATION OF BELTEF. 

those who do believe, or who would fain continue so 
to do, is quite groundless: under the influence of it 
one says, in a desponding tone, What if this or that 
difficulty cannot be cleared up? And then there are 
twenty more in reserve ! How can we hope to cut 
our way out from among this jungle of thorns? 

It is a very commendable labour with which those 
charge themselves, who sit down to meet and obviate 
objections, seriatim^ to reconcile inconsistencies, real or 
apparent, to harmonize discrepant narratives, and to 
draw the line close around a difficulty, reducing it to 
its minimum of importance. All this should be done ; 
but it is better done in books devoted to philological 
and historical criticism, and in which questions are 
treated according to their abstract merits and their 
real import, apart from any allusion to what is flip- 
pant or disingenuous in the writings of declared op- 
ponents. But as to Christianity itself, those who 
think that it is to be brought into doubt, or that 
it will be exposed to peril by means of cavils in 
detail^ or even by the allegation of difficulties that 
defy solution, such persons, whether notions of this 
sort inspire them with hopes of a triumph for in- 
fidelity, or depress them with fear as believers, can 
never have apprehended what this Gospel is in itself, 
what it intends, how it stands related to human 
nature, to the well-being of nations, to the destinies 
of the human family. Such persons, whether they 
be overweening disbelievers, or timid and mistrust- 
ing believers, are burrowing hither and thither under 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 23 

the sward, unconscious of what is seen and felt in the 
open world. 

No problem, historical or critical, presenting itself 
for solution, should be negligently dealt with, or timidly 
evaded; much less disingenuously smothered or con- 
jured out of the way. Difficulties and objections thus 
disposed of, are so much gunpowder, stowed away by 
our own hands, beneath the foundations of the house 
we live in. 

What I propose to do in the following pages is 
not to wrestle with gainsayers, sincere or insincere, on 
low levels, nor to tread anew a ground that has al- 
ready been trodden hard. Work of this sort has been 
well done ; and no one who, in a spirit of industry and 
honesty, would inform himself concerning the ^' Evi- 
dences of Christianity," the " authenticity and genu- 
ineness of the Gospels and Epistles," or any kindred 
subjects, need be at a loss in finding books, learnedly 
and conclusively written, where he may meet with 
more than enough of proof and argument to satisfy 
every seriously-minded and educated reader. 

Nevertheless it is true that such readers do rise 
from the perusal of these books, confusedly convinced, 
and not fairly or finally rid of their misgivings. It 
is to them as if Infidelity had been mortally wounded, 
and lay at their feet as dead ; but the carcase has not 
been removed or buried out of their sight, and they 
eye it with dread, as expecting its resurrection. They 
have concerned themselves with negations: they have 
carried their eye too close to the object before them : 



24 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

they have failed to come into correspondence with 
what is POSITIVE in the Gospel: they have lost, or 
not yet acquired, sympathy with that in it which, to 
those who occupy a better position, is seen to be 
great, is felt to be true, is found to be real. 

So far as at this time a Restoration of Belief may 
be looked for as probable, either in single instances, 
or as to the community, it will be brought about, not 
by conflict or compromise with negations or excep- 
tions, not by forcing a path through the briars of 
doubt; but by pushing our way straightforward to- 
ward the POSITIVE, and by apprehending, so far as 
the finite may do it, the infinite. 



A EESTOEATION of BELIEF, whether we think of 
it as an argumentative and logical process, or as a 
change produced by means that are suasive and moral, 
demands conditions such as shall be thereto favourable. 
At this present moment it is in this country, and no- 
where else throughout the civilized world, that these 
requisites are to be found in full measure. It is 
within the circuit of the British islands that every 
reasonable exception against the conclusiveness of an 
argument concerning Christianity is shut out — even 
to the shadow of a pretext, as if a fair hearing of the 
adverse part had not been allowed. 

Some things touching our condition as a Christian 
people, which may seem, and which indeed are, anoma- 
lous, and which, under certain of their aspects, give us 
much uneasiness, do most decisively favour any en- 
deavour that may be made to win back to Chris- 
tianity those among us who may have lapsed into 
unbelief. 

It is easy to narrow the area, geographically, 
within which an argument, such as the one before 
us, could be carried forward to any good purpose. 
Might we claim a fifth, or even a seventh part of 



26 THE EESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 

Christendom as affording open ground for our pur- 
pose? I think not. Throughout Christendom, that 
is to say, wherever there has survived any knowledge 
of the Gospel, wherever a glimmer of the light of 
heaven still shines, there, in comers and recesses, might 
be found solitaries, or perhaps sincere men enough, in 
a cluster, to make up a Church in TertuUian's sense, 
Ubi tres, ibi Ecclesia. But these exceptive cases, 
precious as they are in the sight of Heaven, can be 
of no account as to our immediate purpose. We are 
not attempting to number the Faithful among the 
living ; but are in search of a field that is adapted to 
movements on a large scale. 

In relation to any such purpose, no place can we 
assign, in our geography of Christianity, to nations, 
called Christian, that, in fact, have no liberty, if they 
were so inclined, to profess themselves otherwise. Nor 
any place can we grant in our atlas to a people who 
have not actually in their hands, generally, and who 
from habit and feeling have not become, individually, 
conversant with THE BOOK, concerning the authority 
of which an argument is to be had. Even those who 
assail this authority must profess to wish that the 
'^ public" they appeal to may be competent to assent, 
as from its own knowledge, to the allegations, dero- 
gatory to the credit of the Scriptures which they bring 
forward. Certainly w^e, on our side, should choose our 
hearers and readers from among those who '^ search 
the Scriptures daily," and who, in a manner, know 
them by heart. 



THE EESTORATTON OF BELIEF. 27 

Thus it is then that our line must be so drawn in, 
as that it shall include none but the Teutonic branches 
of the European family. And even as to these, we 
must still make exceptions: — we must make excep- 
tions until, to say the truth at once, it will amount to 
this — that, in the fullest sense of the word, it is the 
English people alone, alone in the old world, that is 
now Christian. Let me exempt myself from the im- 
putation of indulging illiberal prejudices when I so 
broadly speak. 

One might almost say that, just now, the British 
people stands among the nations as the surviving 
Trustee of Christianity, or as the Residuary Legatee 
of its benefits. 

Let those who reject Christianity make what use 
they please of this admission, and get from it all the 
inferential aid which it may afford them. The fact, 
if it can be serviceable on that side, is theirs. But 
the genuine inference, thence deduceable, I take to be 
available on my side, with a tenfold weight of meaning. 

This fact has two aspects ; or we might blend the two 
in one conclusion. It may be affirmed ^r^f, that Christi- 
anity, considered as a system of religious and moral 
principles, is of such a nature that it will be sure to find 
its way toward that one community, within the circle 
of civilization, which, by national temperament, is the 
most energetic, which the most instinctively embraces 
doctrines that are seen to be practically good, which 
makes its elections, in matters of opinion, with the most 
absolute freedom, a freedom uncontrollably impatient of 



28 THE RESTORATION OF RELIEF. 

restraint or interference. Christianity chooses for itself 
a people preeminently spontaneous in all its doings ; self- 
governing, and in an equal degree loving order ; abhor- 
rent of despotism ; unknowing in disguises ; and silent : 
or acquiescent, much rather from a sullen consciousness 
of individual independence, than from servility or fear. 
Such is the people (as compared with others) to the 
hearth of which Christ's religion has at length drawn 
itself, as if retiring to its own home. Among such a 
people, when hunted from all other lands, has this 
religion been welcomed, and has found its asylum. 

But looking at the same facts in their other aspect, 
we should be free to think of Christianity as that 
plastic power which, in the course of many centuries, 
and especially during the last three, has itself made 
the people what they are. It is the Gospel that 
has wrought itself into the national temper, and has 
moulded us so much to its own fashion. It is the 
Gospel which has planted in our bosoms that sense 
of individuality, that seriousness of conviction, which 
despotism dreads, and can never crush. It is this deep 
belief, and this sense of the authority of truth, which 
has come to be a national characteristic, and which is 
the ultimate guarantee of our liberties, religious and 
political. It is this Gospel that has given us our 
higher tone of domestic virtue, our relish for home, 
our home-bred feelings, and our true idea of personal 
delicacy, and our sense of individual importance, con- 
sistently with individual modesty. It is thence, and 
from the vernacular diflfusion, and the daily usage and 



I 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 29 

hearing of the Scriptures, that we have drawn the 
power and point, the simplicity and the majesty, the 
tropical richness, the rhetoric opulence, and the fervour 
of our conversational style, and public oratory. 

Combine what is proper to each of these aspects 
of the same facts, and then the result, expressed in 
a word, is this — that Christianity, in its migrations 
through eighteen centuries, has betaken itself to the 
British People, as if these were its own^ and that 
these, under its influence, and at its inspiration, have 
become such as they are — if not the most highly 
educated among the nations, yet the most effective, 
the most beneficent, the most humane, and the people 
to whose purposes and labours the world looks for 
whatever is good and hopeful. 

For a reason I shall presently mention, it is not 
even among our brethren and sons of the United 
States that a conclusive course of argument, touching 
Christianity, could be earned forward in a manner 
exempt from reasonable exceptions. 

The Christian Argument does indeed demand 
liberty as its indispensable condition; but it is not a 
vague or unemphatic liberty that will suffice. It is 
not mere freedom to breathe and to speak, such as 
you may find on the table lands of central Asia, or 
in the midst of the Sahara; but the earnest-minded 
and force-fraught liberty, the freedom positive which 
one is conscious of enjoying in the dense centre of a 
people whose minds (unshackled in every sense of 
the word) are headed up by solid embankments, by 



30 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Institutions: it is that liberty which gives a strong 
pulse to the energies of men, individually and socially : 
it is the liberty of men who, as individuals, and as 
bodies, or as classes, differ from each other resolutely, 
who oppose each other pertinaciously, and who con- 
tend for their opinions, or for their prerogatives, with 
a vehemence stopping short only at the border beyond 
which the rights and properties of others would be 
invaded. 

What we need for carrying forward an unexcep- 
tionable argument in defence of Christianity is, the 
consciousness in every man's feeling, not merely that, 
without rebuke, he may become as wise as he can, 
and may profess and teach what he thinks to be true 
and good; but more than this, that he may humour 
himself among his crotchets, and be as absurd as he 
pleases; that he may proclaim his whim, whatever it 
be, and endow it too, and spend upon it his fortune 
and his children's inheritance. Within a community 
emphatically free, every thing may be said, done, 
and practised, which does not, in an overt manner, 
inflict damage upon others: and then all such things 
may be assailed, rebuked, and put to shame with 
equal freedom. 

If we are to pursue our course in a promising 
manner, and if indeed we may hope to reach a con- 
clusion, not afterwards to be rejected as precipitate, 
we must not betake ourselves to countries where the 
people are told that the liberty they enjoy is that 
of choosing whether they will be reduced to the 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 31 

mummy state, after this fashion or that, when the 
immortal soul has been pressed out of the animal 
man by despotism. Nor will it be enough for us 
to know that, albeit intelligible questions concerning 
existing institutions are straitly prohibited, the wilds 
of abstruse speculation are free land; that the back- 
woods of philosophy have not been parcelled out, and 
that "Government" maintains no police in the Sheol 
of Universal Disbelief. Among the Teutonic nations 
of Continental Europe, can we think it likely that the 
Christian argument will be carried forward toward a 
determinate issue? 

We, that is to say the English on this side the 
Atlantic, hold a decisive advantage, even in comparison 
with our brethren of the United States. Grant it that 
their liberty is much like our own ; and they may 
think it more entire than ours ; or at least that it is 
more theoretically consistent : so it may be ; but on 
that very account it is of less value than our own; 
and it produces a less marked impression upon the 
national mind : if it shows a wider surface, it embraces 
less of deep purpose, and it is less resolute. No Code- 
making, no legislation according to theory, or in re- 
spect of the principles of '^ abstract justice," will give 
a people that which our history has given ourselves: 
our social condition is the giant-limbed offspring of 
the many struggles we have passed through. If the 
American liberties are also the fruits of events, these 
have gone into theory: with us they have issued in 
the creation of those beneficial anomalies which no 



32 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

theory would ever allow; but which, in the working 
of a constitutional system, are far more serviceable 
to a people than any thing which men sit down to 
contrive for themselves. Antagonisms come^ they are 
never called for. Anomalies confront us unbidden ; 
they perplex us; we quarrel with them: but against 
our consent, they secure to us the very highest advan- 
tages. So is it especially in whatever touches the 
ecclesiastical framework under which we live and act. 

One of these benefits, and the one we have just 
now to make proof of, is this, that the Christianity 
of the British people stands exempt from all suspicion 
of combination among its adherents: so planted are 
we in companies on the flanks of Ebal and Gerizim, 
that a damage to the one cause which sincerely we all 
wish to uphold, arising from our dissensions, is an 
event far more probable than the bringing in of any 
advantage, from our concert, and collusion 

As to the Old World, and forgetting the New, 
the question of Christianity is almost an insular ques- 
tion — it is a British interest. How far, or whether 
in any perceptible manner, the moral or political con- 
dition of any one of the Continental states would show 
a change, it is not easy to conjecture, supposing a 
silent and somewhat gradual dying out of religious 
belief, that is Christian belief, from the mind of the 
people, and from the lip of the state. But there can 
be no room for any such doubt as to ourselves. What 
those various consequences to ourselves might be, re- 
sulting from a national abandonment of our present 



THE KESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 33 

our faith in the Divine origin of the Bible, and of 
our professed submission to its authority, this is not 
the place to inquire; yet there is reason to think 
that such an apostacy would mean — national anni- 
hilation. 

Whether it might be so or not, it is certain that 
Christianity has always shown itself to be MIGRATORY : 
it abides with a people for a century, or for a thou- 
sand years; but it does not chain itself to a soil, as 
with bands of brass. 

Hitherto no combinations of adverse forces, — neither 
persecutions from without, nor perversions from within, 
— nor deluges of barbarism, have availed to dislodge 
Christianity from the world. Yet unobtrusive causes 
have often driven it from countries. Fixing the eye 
upon any one spot, and thence to watch the waxing 
and waning of the light of the Gospel, one might 
think it a terrestrial phosphorescence, rather than a 
luminary of heaven. It shines upon a land to-day ; 
to-morrow these beams may have drawn themselves 
up to their source ! 

This readiness to depart — this word always upon 
its lip, fjb€Ta^aLvcofjLev evrevOev, which seems to be 
its law, as to cities and countries — does it not re- 
peat itself in individual instances every day? The 
religious history (for example) of the once Christian 
cities of the East, is a narrative, at large, of what 
is written, small, in the personal history of many 
around us — perhaps in om- own. In the fresh season 
of life Christianity lodged itself firmly in a man's af- 

D 



34 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

fectlons, and in his reason too ; so far as the reason 
was then developed. Within the chamber of conscience 
the ethics of the Scriptures was always listened to as 
the ultimate authority: never did it seem doubtful 
that this rule of virtue, listened to and obeyed, 
would lead in the path of rectitude and of purity, 
and would issue in the highest good. But the re- 
alities of mature life, and its seductions, came upon 
this neophyte : they came with their struggles, their 
moral ambiguities, their over-wrought requirements, 
their blandishments. A hubbub of contending im- 
pulses came to fill the chamber wherein, formerly. 
Conscience and Christianity used to confer in so con- 
sentient a tone that the two voices fell upon the ear 
as one sweet sound. 

Thenceforward Christianity betook itself to a lodge- 
ment remote from this place of noise — the mature 
man's brain. When so lodged at a distance, it came 
to be regarded as a Personage whose merits might 
be weighed, whose claims were open to inquiry, and 
who might be brought to terms along with other 
rival authorities: perhaps its demands were scouted 
as excessive and impracticable. Every day the aerial 
perspective intervening between this departing Power 
and the busy man, gave him more and more advan- 
tage over it, as an Authority. 

Then came on the detractors of Christianity — a 
motley crew: these detractors were sinister in look, 
and, manifestly, they were intent upon rending, and 
tearing, and treading in the mire, whatever might be 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 35 

abandoned to their will : this was their hour ; and there 
came up with them one in the garb of a sage, who, 
in an attempered tone, and as if he governed a 
secret purpose, whispered such things to the prejudice 
of the Eeligion of the man's youth, as could not 
but be listened to : he said, "It is due to myself, it 
is due even to Christianity, if I am again to admit 
it to my confidence, to give these reasonable allega- 
tions a patient hearing: I will do so when leisure 
permits." Leisure did not come to this man at his 
call; but it came in its own way; and during its 
stay the question of Christianity was considered anew, 
and did obtain a patient hearing; and in the full ex- 
ercise of mature reason, aided by the experience of 
years, it did make good its hitherto unexamined 
claims. It reentered the chamber of conscience ; it 
rekindled the extinct affections; it became the spring 
of energies, and the fountain of hope. 

Such, in this instance, was the actual issue: but 
how easily might it have been otherwise ! A train 
of events, seemingly casual, taking their course in 
another direction, and then this man would have 
gone on to the end, as his companions in active 
life have gone. In their company, whatever was 
not palpable, was as a dream, to the bodings of 
which it would be inane to pay regard. In the hurry 
of many interests Christianity, and with it every definite 
forethought of a future life, may pass out of sight and 
be lost for ever; just as a man may quit his hold of 
the arm of a friend in a crowded street, and see him 
thenceforward no more. 



36 THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 

What may happen to the man, and does happen 
to thousands, may happen to communities — if not with 
so little observation, or within the brief term of two 
decades, yet within the limits of the years that mea- 
sure out a generation. Regular habits, a discreet si- 
lence, and churchgoing, will carry the individual man 
ostensibly well through a period of religious syncope; 
and so its ancient INSTITUTIONS, and its usages, and 
its conventional proprieties, may avail to bear a peo- 
ple onward some way beyond the point at which 
their religious professions cease to be genuine, and 
are formal simply. Yet such a hoUowness as this can 
have only a limited time allowed it. What a people 
has indeed become, will declare itself at some moment 
when an unlooked-for turn in its affairs gives an in- 
voluntary utterance to its inner thoughts. 

Immeasurably far from any such hollow condition 
as this, is the English Christianity of this present time. 
If certain classes are less loyal in their religious at- 
tachments than lately they were, other classes have 
become more so. A genuine religious feeling is deep- 
ening on the one hand, if it be fading away on the 
other. Yet is it certain that, during the last few 
years, a progress towards Disbelief has become a 
marked feature in literature and society. If the Press 
did not make this certain, every one who listens to 
the accidental utterances of men's feelings, must well 
know it to be the fact. Such a tendency is a gravi- 
tation, the property of which is to accelerate itself 
at a rapid rate. The English people are not disbe- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 37 

llevers ; but they may become such sooiij unless a 
better direction be given at once to the mind of the 
educated classes. 

No one whose habit of mind it is to pay regard 
to that which affects the community, can refrain from 
thus considering the Christian question in its bearing 
upon our national welfare. So it must be, if one 
cares for England, and thinks of the position which 
it occupies among the nations, as the only free and 
religious country of the Old World ; — the only country 
in which a renewed profession of adherence to Chris- 
tianity could be thought to have much argumentative 
value. 

And yet although at starting I advert to facts of 
this general sort, half political as they are, it is not 
as related to national interests, nor as a secular ques- 
tion, that we are now to enter upon a subject so deep, 
and which touches the peace and the hopes of each 
one of us. But do not be alarmed at the hearing of 
these customary phrases. I am not intending to 
preach, as if to frighten you into Belief. Several 
reasons would forbid my attempting so to do ; but 
this especially — that I have to ask you to hold, at 
my command, your REASON. To make you a Chris- 
tian, in the deep sense of the term, is not my work ; 
but I hope to shew you that you ought to be such ; 
and with this end in view, I shall use no means of 
suasion against which you can rightfully except. 

Besides, I shall call upon you to judge between me 
and those overweening writers of the present time, who 



38 THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

allow themselves great license in speaking of Chris- 
tians — I mean, of men equal to themselves every way 
— as besotted, blinded by childish prejudices, wanting 
in honesty; or if not, in understanding; and who 
deal always in ^'miserable shifts," "paltry evasions," 
and '' unworthy subterfuges." I think I see at the 
impulse of what motives these unseemly imputations 
have been so plentifully strewed over the pages of 
some recent books. We Christians must be fools or 
knaves, for the ease and comfort of those who reject 
Christianity. Be it so. 

Yet I will say this to yourself. When you find me 
faulty in any such manner, when you see that I am 
inwardly trembling in the consciousness of difficulties 
I dare not name, and cannot dispose of, when you 
find that I have recourse to any of these alleged 
" shifts," " evasions," " subterfuges," when I cease to 
satisfy you as thoroughly ingenuous, straightforward, 
and upright in argument, then lay these pages aside. 



The thirteen years during which Alexander Seye- 
RUS held the empire of the world, from the Euphrates 
to the Atlantic, and from the sands of the African 
desert to the Baltic, afford a good resting-place where- 
upon we may establish ourselves at ease, and look 
around us. On this platform we may both of us dis- 
miss all alarms — you as a philosopher, and I as a 
Christian; for the young man In whose hand Is our 
life Is mild In temper; and though firm, he Is just 
and reasonable. He Is such, on the whole, as one should 
wish the Master of mankind to be. For the philo- 
sopher, he cares little; he Is not jealous of you, like 
a Domltlan: he Is a man of affairs, although also a 
man of mind; and he knows that, think what you 
may, you have not courage either to act or to suffer 
so as to give him any trouble. Toward me he has 
some uneasy thoughts; nevertheless he will not be 
Induced, even by reasonable apprehensions of danger 
to the Roman State, to do violence to the spirit of 
Eoman law; although Its letter might warrant his 
taking that course: he will not hurt, much less at- 
tempt to exterminate, good citizens whose only fault 
is a strange pertinacity in the matter of their super- 



40 THE RESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 

stition. Alexander Severus was not a mindless 
despot ; therefore the philosopher is safe while he lives : 
and as he was not a Marcus Aurelius, the Chris- 
tian may freely breathe. Besides, this Emperor — no 
softling himself — is not ashamed to take comisel of his 
mother; and she, although indiscreetly frugal, is a 
wise woman, who, having trained her son for empire, 
took care to screen him from the vices of the times, 
and to hold off not merely the corruption that would 
have enfeebled his youth, but the fanaticism that might 
have inflamed his ripening manhood. It is even sus- 
pected that Mammaea, either in Syria or at Rome, had 
come to know so much of the now-spreading religion, 
as to forbid her allowing it to be cruelly trampled 
on. If it be so, she is not the first imperial lady 
who has gleaned in the fields of the Church, to its 
advantage and her own. 

We take our stand then on this resting-place, as a 
place of observation, whence the kingdoms of the world 
and the glory of them are visible, and may with 
advantage be contemplated. Hence we may look up 
the stream of time, through the hundred years that 
is occupied by Commodus, M. Aurelius, Antoninus 
Pius, Hadrian, and Trajan. 

As related to the purpose which I have now in 
view, this position has a definite advantage, which 
we must not lose sight of. Outspread before us is 
a wide field — the world in fact, so far as history 
knows much of those times; and as to the evidence 
thereto relating, it is voluminous. The folios and the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 41 

quartos of that period, and those which serve to attest 
its principal facts, cover a library-table. It cannot 
therefore be pretended that I am leading the way 
into a dim region — the land (in a literary sense) of 
the shadow of death, scarcely shone upon by here 
and there a glimmering lamp. 

In the mass of materials imder our hand, some things 
are worthless, much is not available for any argument- 
ative purpose ; some portions are of doubtful authority, 
some things are undoubtedly spurious. Yet all these 
deductions, or if they were more than they are, fall 
very far short of amounting to what might touch any 
conclusion I am intending to draw from my evidence. 
I am driven to no necessity to fight a hard battle for 
a single treatise or book, like Boyle against Bentley; 
or to number and weigh ancient manuscripts in support 
of a doubtful reading. Safe from all reasonable ex- 
ception, are the materials on my table, as to any use 
I am intending to make of them. 

Besides the copiousness of these materials, there is 
this peculiar circumstance attaching to them, taken just 
at the moment at which I have chosen to make a 
stand: it is this, that the mass combines the two un- 
amalgamated and adverse elements, on the one side, 
the polytheistic and philosophic; on the other side the 
Christian. The literature of the gods, and of the phi- 
losophy which threw its handful of incense upon their 
altars in contempt, had not yet died away; nor had 
it been infringed upon, or curtailed, or put in fear : its 
own decrepitude was its only disparagement. 



42 THE RESTOEATTON OF BELIEF, 

Then, on the Christian side, no favour which it had 
not dearly purchased, or did not well deserve, had as 
yet been shown the new religion: it was not yet a 
religio licita: it drew its breath in suspense from day 
to day, and it hung upon the personal dispositions of 
proconsuls, or the temper and politics of the Caesar for 
the time. The Christian literature of the era before 
us alternately fires up with the courage of conscious 
truth, or flickers as in the gust of adversity. 

But now what was this Roman world, in the 
forefront of which I am intending to bring in, artist- 
like, and with every possible advantage, the Christi- 
anity I am pleading for? 

It is natural that you should imagine me setting 
to work with an ample canvass before me, and mixing 
the colours most proper for my backgroimd, with a 
knowing thought of the effect that is to be produced 
by the picture. Shall I not have in readiness the lurid 
reds, the cloudy purples, with store of the deepest 
blacks? shall I not spread a Rembrandt palette for 
the depths of that canvass, the centre of which is 
destined for saints, for confessors, and for a choir of 
cherubs ? 

I am going to work in no such manner. It is not 
merely for the sake of having at my command abun- 
dance of evidence, that I take my position at the 
point of time I have named; but because I wish to 
have to do with nothing that is not unquestionably 
real. On my own side I expect to find none but real 
men ; many of them, good and true, whose motives 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 43 

and principles of conduct I can understand, whose 
failings need not be cloaked, whose errors give me 
no alarm; whose follies, if any, do not put my argu- 
ment in peril; whose wisdom and virtue I shall know 
how to interpret, and assign to its source. I am not 
in quest either of superhuman men, or of angels, 
walking the earth. 1 know I shall find a superhuman 
religion — I know I shall come upon the footsteps of 
God. 

On the other side, there can be no motive inclining 
me to blacken heathenism for the sake of a contrast. 
On the contrary, I had much rather show Christianity 
shining bright upon a moderately illumined surface, 
than made to appear artificially resplendent by setting 
it upon a ground of the deepest shades. 

We are sometimes told — ^' If you would know what 
heathenism is, and understand what it was which the 
Gospel had to contend with, and which it vanquished, 
go to India, and there look about you; — heathenism 
is the Devil's religion, and therefore always the same, 
though it may show a difi*erent face in dififerent coun- 
tries." No, I think not. Whatever polytheism may 
be, as to its inner nature, as the Devil's religion — 
and I think it is so — ^yet among one family of man 
it may coexist with influences, alien to itself, which 
may so attemper it, so amend and correct it, so 
forbid its worst enormities, as that, when compared 
with its unmixed condition, as developed among other 
families, the resemblance of the two is partial only; 
and we shall find ourselves torn with thorns if we 



44 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

rush forward into argument, assuming that the gods 
are the gods, meet them where we may. 

Christianity, while as yet it was in its purity, made 
inroads upon the grounds of Buddhism and Brah- 
minism; but it failed to overturn either; it did not 
even extensively colonize India; it did but breathe 
there. Those '' idolatries" presented to it no attempered 
' elements, whence its assault upon human nature might 
draw an initial advantage. 

As a Christian, had one not rather find it to be 
a fact that the Gospel sickened and died upon the 
pestilential swamps of India — those plains sodden with 
human blood, and abominable even still more for the 
practices of the living; while it lived and spread in 
the soil which Greek poetry had planted out as a 
garden, upon which Plato had built his palaces of 
thought, and Aristotle his logical fortresses? The 
Polytheism, or call it the "heathenism," which the 
Gospel did supplant, was that religion, under the shade 
of which Epictetus had fashioned his scheme of virtue ; 
it was the religion under which Plutarch and Seneca 
had digested so well the past, and had mused of better 
things to come; it was the religion in conforming to 
which Roman emperors, unresisted despots as they 
were, had ruled the world with justice, mercy, and 
truth, and had learned to govern, more than the Im- 
perium Romanum, their own passions. Yet for this 
paganism Christianity proved itself an overmatch : but 
I must not outrun my argument. 

From the platform whereon we stand one might 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 45 

be tempted to look around upon the gorgeous spectacle 
that presents itself on every side. We are used to 
think of the times of Hadrian and of Alexander Seve- 
rus, as degenerate ; because they stand, toward us 
of modem times, in optical conjunction with the Au- 
gustine age : and again we see them as if laden with 
the ruin and disaster, the decay and the barbarism, 
of an after time, the blame of which we throw upon 
the men of this middle period. 

Putting away these illusions of position — these errors 
in perspective — the prospect before us is such as at 
no other point of time, either much earlier or much 
later, this earth of ours has presented. The Koman 
landscape, contemplated at any moment dm^ng the 
reigns of the benignant emperors, beginning with 
Trajan, has not had its parallel — if the West and the 
East are thought of together — in any other period. 
Certainly the same area of three thousand miles by 
two thousand, now shows a falling off in almost every 
item of estimation — population, material wealth, breadth 
of fully cultivated surface, the number and splendour 
of cities, and the magnitude and utility of those public 
works, which at once were the praise of the central 
government, and the means of sustaining its power. 

The East, and the West, and Africa, taken into 
the reckoning together^ the world that now is, the great 
field over which our summer tourists are wandering, 
does not seem to have gained much upon the world, 
such as it was in the age of the Antonines. What 
is certain is this — That, in relation to the mighty re- 



46 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

volution which in that age was advancing towards 
its crisis, the human family (so far as it is authen- 
tically reported of it by continuous and intelligible 
history) had never before, and has never since, so 
presented itself to a plastic hand to be moulded anew, 
as then it did. That was the epoch which might 
most fairly have been fixed upon, as proper for making 
a new experiment upon humanity, which should be 
decisive in its issue. 

The fully-developed and educated MIND of the 
human family was then to be found clustering, at 
bright centres, and thence dilBfused over surfaces, be- 
tween and within the boundaries of the Roman empire. 
Among the cultured nations of this area, and no where 
else, THOUGHT took its wayward flight; and on no 
side did it come up to adamantine barriers; its own 
power of wing being its only limit. Into all regions 
of speculation a way had been freely opened. The 
Roman roads, centering at Rome, and running out, 
as if contemptuous of the rugged surface, right away 
into and through the gloom of primaeval forests, did 
but symbolize those beaten ways which Philosophy 
had opened for herself and for her sons, outward, from 
the home amenities of Poetry and Rhetoric, toward 
the dark unknown of abstruse speculation. 

The human mind in that age had indeed ceased 
to be creative: the men of earlier times had wrought 
up the material of the fine arts and of poetry, and 
had occupied the ground on every side. The nations, 
using the language of Greece and Rome, were living 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 47 

deliciously upon the intellectual products of an age 
of more energy. The human mind did not any longer 
seem luminous, as if from within ; but yet its lamp 
was fed from a store of oil which apparently was 
inexhaustible. 

At no one time in the world's history has erudite 
intelligence been spread over so large a surface, geo- 
graphically, or had come, as one hody of philosophy 
and literature, into the keeping of so large a number 
of persons, as at the time whereat now we have made 
a pause. Take an earlier age, and then the West 
was redeemed from barbarism only at points : or take 
a much later time, and the clouds of a sky, overcast 
for a thousand years, were gathering over both the 
West and the East: or, if we come down to more 
modern times, the vast regions of the East, with 
Africa and Egypt, are a howling wilderness, and the 
habitation of dragons. 

Whence then shall we furnish ourselves with the 
dark colours, by aid of which we are to recommend 
the brightness of the Gospel, then making its way 
toward supremacy? 

This darkness which is to give us our intended 
contrast, does not spring from barbarism, or from ig- 
norance, or from intellectual slumber, but from UNI- 
VERSAL incertitude, which was the characteristic of 
the times : it is the gloom of that moral dismay which 
comes upon cultured minds, when they abandon in 
despair the long-cherished hope of seizing upon truth 
and certainty — of knowing something beside the theo- 



48 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

rems of Euclid — of grasping in the hand a stay im- 
moveable. The soul reels and sickens when it turns 
hither and thither, vainly endeavouring to leam out 
of what chaos man had sprung, and into what abyss 
his destinies would plunge him. 

To disguise this despair, or to divert it, the levities 
of literature, and the endless inanities of criticism had 
been resorted to. For choking it. Stoicism was the 
means employed. Yet, and notwithstanding the efforts 
of elaborate frivolity on the one part, and of a death- 
like doctrine on the other, the comfortless dismay of 
the human mind, hopeless of Truth, uttered itself in 
a moan, a low wailing, of which we may catch the 
echoes at whatever point we listen to the voice of 
that age. 

Let any one whose course has not been altogether 
sensual, or merely busy, but who has known what are 
called " exercises of mind," go back to those moments 
of his life when convictions, beliefs, persuasions of 
every kind, were passing from his view, and when 
nothing remained to him but a dread uncertainty, 
and the feeling that never again should he grasp a 
truth. In the recollection of such a season one would 
not reject the figure as inappropriate, if it were called 
the night-time of the soul ; and not less so, although 
all the splendours of literature and science were then 
glittering around him. It must be so : for the first 
necessity of man's higher nature is TRUTH, and the 
despair of finding it is indeed — a darkness that may 
be felt. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 49 

In this very sense of the word, a thick dark- 
ness rested upon the cultured members of the human 
family (of the Roman empire) at the time which we 
have chosen for our survey. From the time when 
the genius of the Greek and Roman literature had 
departed, that darkness had sensibly gathered black- 
ness; for in fact, as it is the very property of Genius, 
and its first characteristic, to speak and behave itself 
as being in the conscious possession of whatever it 
touches, and as it is its prerogative to give illusions 
the aspect of reality, therefore, so long as this spon- 
taneous power lives among a people, they may believe 
that Truth is still extant, somewhere, because its tones 
are still heard. 

In this definitely explained sense of the term, then, 
I am warranted in affirming that, thinking of the poly- 
theistic and philosophic majority of the people, through- 
out the circuit of Roman civilization, a deep gloom at 
this time covered the nations, and that the people sat 
as " in the shadow of Death." It would be easy to 
make good other allegations, tending to show that 
this gloom was darkened by the evergrowing cor- 
ruption of morals, by the utter decay of public spirit, 
by the dissoluteness which despotism encourages, and 
by that depravation of the humane emotions which 
came from the frequency and the sanguinary atro- 
city of the exhibitions of the amphitheatre. But from 
all this we may abstain; for it does not materially 
affect the argument. 

Grant me this, that, as to the Life of the Soul, as 

E 



50 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

to that brightness of assured belief toward which hu- 
man nature tends with so strong an instinct and so 
earnest a craving, it was a season of dimness, and of 
more than dimness ; it was the most gloomy season 
in the history of mankind, for all shadows were then 
lengthening and spreading; and a chill was in the 
atmosphere, foreboding a wintry night at hand. 

Throughout all the countries whereupon the once 
festive polytheism of Greece had built its altars, mock- 
ery had supplanted religious awe, a factitious fanati- 
cism had come in the place, both of gay observances 
and of serious feeling. Philosophy had uttered her 
last promises, and broken them. On no side did light 
break forth. 

From a worldly point of view we have just now 
looked abroad upon the kingdoms of the Eoman earth, 
and imagined their glory. But now, shutting out that 
mundane glare, what we see is a thick cloud, over- 
shadowing the prospect, even from the rising of the 
sun to the going down of the same. 

Yet all is not dark. If we pass down the Medi- 
terranean, from the Pillars of Hercules, and look to 
the right and to the left, and carry the eye inland 
too, as far as to the furthest barriers of the Empire, 
the whole of the coast-line on both sides throughout this 
voyage, and every headland, and every momitain range, 
more remote, and every temple-crowned acropolis, and 
every lofty front, glows as if the sun were rising. A 
Light has already arisen upon the nations ; a pro- 
mise of Truth, and an assurance as to the destiny of 
man, has brightened the gloom. 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 61 

Every where — the exceptions are few — throughout 
the regions which the Mediterranean divides, in cities 
and in fields, we meet companies of men, even multi- 
tudes, who have thrown off the listlessness of scepti- 
cism, from whose countenances the suUenness of atheism 
has been dispelled, and who speak to us in the decisive 
tones that spring from an accepted and undoubted 
BELIEF. These men show, in their animated looks, 
and by the determination of their behaviour, that 
there is in them the vitality of a Religious persua- 
sion which they do not distrust. 

How cordially to be welcomed is such a visitation, 
as of the morning — if it be the morning? How good 
a promise was it for mankind of an escape from the 
gulph toward which the human family was slowly 
and surely drifting away ! A sure holding has at 
length been found. Some, nay thousands of the peo- 
ple, declare that their feet do touch firm ground in 
the waters of religious opinion, and that they stand 
where good standing is. Instead of those inarticulate 
babblings, as from the frivolous million, and instead 
of those doleful murmurs of the desponding, the ear 
now catches the intelligible utterances of men who 
say they have come into the possession of CERTAINTY, 
and of hope. 

Whether the grounds of this confident assurance 
were of that kind which we in this age should think 
solid and sufficient, does not yet appear. It is pro- 
bable that many, or even a large proportion of those 
in that age who made this profession, could have given 

e2 



52 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

no such reason for " the hope that was in them," as 
would have compelled the assent of the men of these 
times, or such as could have endured a ten minutes' 
cross-examination in the modern forensic style. 

This does not at all concern us now to inquire. 
The FACT is all we have to do with, which fact, 
briefly stated, is this — That at the time now in pros- 
pect, multitudes of men, of all the races that were 
then subject to the Roman sway (and of some other 
races probably) had passed from a condition of frivo- 
lous indifference, or of sensual obtuseness, or of sullen 
hopelessness, and had come, rightfully or not, into the 
possession of a bright and well-defined belief. 

If we were to set forth this belief in the most con- 
cise terms possible, it would stand in the form of an 
affirmative reply to three questions, which questions 
are as old as the world, and to which men, from the 
very beginning, have been seeking, but not finding, 
an answer. 

" Is there a Supreme Being who cares for man, and 
in whose wisdom and goodness man may confide?" 
"Is there an after life, and a retribution?" 
"Is there forgiveness of sins with God?" 
It is not that no solutions, more or less intelligible, 
had been attempted and obtained of these vital pro- 
blems; for the moral instincts of men had, in some 
way, solved them. Every form of worship had as- 
sumed a reply to them in the affirmative ; and philo- 
sophical meditation had done its part — ambiguously 
enough — to answer them. Yet, all this while the 



THE EESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 53 

reply, let it come whence it might, carried no pe- 
remptory conviction into the hearts of those who heard 
it. It came with no weight of authority; it came as 
a balanced probability — ^it had no attestation. But 
now at length it has so come. The reply — the " yea" 
which Christianity has uttered, takes a thorough hold 
of men's inmost souls, as well as of their reason. 
Whether or not this confidence of theirs was strictly 
warrantable, according to our notions of the laws of 
evidence, the fact that they did so believe is beyond 
all question; and of the strength of this their persua- 
sion proofs were given, than which any more con- 
clusive cannot be imagined. 

This then is the point we have reached — That, in 
the century which is named from Trajan, Hadrian, 
and the Antonines, the instinicted races bordering upon 
the Mediterranean were in a transition state, and were 
passing from darkness to light; that is, the Light of 
a confidently held religious Belief, true or false. 



In what next follows, I shall Imagine that all we 
can now know about Christianity, as to Its origin and 
its earlier period, must be gathered from the literary 
remains of the age we have before us. Every thing, 
every book, treatise, memoir, fragment, that might 
have come down to us from a date anterior to the 
accession of Trajan, I will suppose has perished. And 
even as to the books extant, I draw my pen through 
all the citations of the Christian writers of a preceding 
age that appear In them. 

Besides doing this, I dismiss from my recollection 
whatever I may have come to know of the after his- 
tory of Christianity, or of the literature of times sub- 
sequent. What we have to do with at present, Is 
found between two chronological termini — the accession 
of Teajan, and the death of Alexander Severus. 

Then, as to the materials belonging to this so 
bounded period, various as they are, I handle them 
with entire freedom. As already said, I have no 
nervous anxiety about disputed passages, Interpolations, 
or books of doubtful authorship. This only should be 
said, that, as I undertake to do nothing for persons 
pre-resolved to believe nothing, and determined to stick 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 55 

to every imaginable paradox that may help them to 
effect their escape from Christianity, I am supposing 
so much acquiescence as to the reality of the materials 
before us, as the best informed men, warped by no 
prejudice, will always grant. 

The countries, provinces, and cities of the Roman 
empire, within which Christianity had established itself 
about the middle period of the second century, are 
easily named, and may be certainly known. But to 
what extent, as to the population, in each province or 
city, conversion from heathenism had taken place, must 
be matter of surmise ; or at best of probable inference. 
We should incline to hold back from the highest esti- 
mate of this proportion ; and therefore must listen 
with caution to the bold assertions of those Christian 
apologists, in following whom we might be led to believe 
that, times of severe suffering allowed for, a majority 
of the people of all the principal cities of the empire 
had become Christians, and that the country folk were 
forsaking their paganism in large numbers. Pliny's 
report, made to his master at the commencement of 
our period, does indeed carry the same meaning, and 
we might infer as much from other testimonies. But 
the statistics of this subject touches no point of our 
argument. 

Gibbon supposes that not more than a twentieth 
part of the entire population of the empire, at the 
most, was professedly Christian at the moment pre- 
ceding the edict of Milan. This population, taken 
midway in the second century, he estimates at one 



66 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

hundred and twenty millions. We may believe that 
in the interval of a century and a half, the Christian 
proportion had gone on increasing, so that in the time 
of Antoninus Pius we should not be warranted in 
computing them at more than a thirtieth or perhaps 
a fortieth part of the whole, if we accept Gibbon's 
rule. 

Yet so low an estimate as this it is not easy to 
reconcile with the averments of TertuUian, loudly ut- 
tered, and addressed to the hostile Roman authorities, 
able and willing enough to give them a flat contra- 
diction, if they had been glaringly false. — We are 
but of yesterday, and we have- filled every thing that 
is yours, cities, islands, castles, free towns, council 
halls, the very camps, all classes of men, the palace, 
the senate, the forum. We have left you nothing but 
your temples. We can number (outnimiber) your 
armies: there are more Christians in a single pro- 
vince (than in your legions) ! At the time we are 
speaking of, it is probable that the Roman world in- 
cluded from three to five millions of Christian people. 

These, as I have said, were spread over an area 
three thousand miles in length, from east to west, 
and two thousand in breadth, from north to south. I 
take no account here of the ultra-Euphratean Christi- 
anity, which however branched off* on the right-hand 
into southern India, and on the left into Parthia, and 
went even as far as China. Media, Persia, Bactria, 
Arabia, had also listened to the Gospel. 

The machinery of a government so complete and 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 57 

efficient as that of the Eoman empire, and the uni- 
versality of two languages, especially the wide diffu- 
sion of the better of the two, and the energies of 
commercial enterprise, and the purer commerce of 
mind — the interchange of philosophy, literature, and 
art — all these influences combined, brought the nations 
then subject to Rome into a condition of relationship 
and communion, which, perhaps, the boasted facilities 
of modem times do not much, if at all surpass. As 
to the actual velocity of travel, days now stand for 
the weeks of an ancient voyage or journey ; or even 
for months; but as to the actual intercommunion of 
nations, the East, and the West, and Africa, it may 
be questioned whether it be greater now than it was 
in the age of Hadrian. 

The spread of the Gospel was favoured by all these 
means of intercourse; and it took to itself the wings 
of every energy which then carried men to and fro be- 
tween the three continents. It used the roads and the 
ships of the empire ; it went in the track of caravans. 
It flowed, as one might say, through the arteries of 
the Greek language, philosophy, and literature ; it 
went wherever books had gone before it: culture was 
a preparation of the soil for its reception. Forests 
and wilds it did penetrate by adventurous and pre- 
carious missions; but, along with the refinements of a 
high civilization, it dwelt as at home. 

In each of the great cities of the empire, Antioch, 
Alexandria, Eome, and in every second, third, and 
fourth-rate city, Christianity claimed an appreciable 



58 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

proportion of the citizens as Its own; in some it had 
the majority. From each of these centres it spread 
itself over the surface ; at some points imperfectly co- 
lonizing only, in other directions suffusing itself with- 
out limit. Thus did it lodge, or thus dwell, in Spain 
and Gaul, even to the shores of the Northern Ocean. 
Britain, a favoured asylum of Roman leisure and re- 
fined rural enjoyment, had welcomed the Gospel from 
the first. Italy, Illyricum, Macedonia, Thrace, and 
Greece, it had pervaded; and the provinces of Asia 
Minor still more fully; and in some of its provinces 
and cities the mass of the people were professedly 
Christian. Throughout Armenia, Mesopotamia, and 
Syria, churches well organized had meted out the 
geographical surface, more or less completely. 

In turning the face again westward, the same 
divided state of the population meets us ; at some 
points the Christian and the Polytheistic elements 
were nearly balanced. Egypt, Lower and Upper, was 
to a great extent Christian. Cyrene, Carthage, the 
whole of Proconsular Africa, Numidia, and Mauritania, 
had also thus become obnoxious to the Roman state : 
for as to these regions, it was asserted that the new 
religion was rapidly spreading in town and country, 
among all ranks, not even excepting the highest. 

Geographically, or as to square miles, numbered 
on the surface of the globe, the religion of Christ had 
pervaded the entire area which is distinctly known 
to history at the time now before us. Statistically 
it was fast tending toward such a proportion as to 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 59 

render its further increase a subject of well-founded 
disquietude to the State. As to classes, it had emerged 
from the servile class: it had spread among the free 
and the privileged; it had taken its position in the 
legions, and had seated itself in places of honour and 
profit. As to mind and learning, it had engaged the 
zealous aid of the best instructed and the most elo- 
quent men of the times. The heathen writers, their 
contemporaries, can claim no superiority over them. 

The facts thus briefly alluded to may, as every one 
knows, be easily substantiated by citations, Greek and 
Latin, that would fill many pages. 

But for what purpose do I now, and in this cursory 
manner, bring forward what is so well known? Not 
to repeat, for the hundredth time, what has been 
affirmed warrantably, and pointedly, often already : 
That the spread of Christianity — all the conditions 
attending it considered, the place, and the feebleness 
of its origin, the severity of its moral code, its un- 
bendingness, and the furious hostility it encountered ; 
this spread, thus early, is proof of its reality — of its 
truth. So it is: but I have a more specific purpose 
in view. 



Very often of late we have been told, that the 
human mind has now at length reached so mature a 
condition as fits it for the task of working out for 
itself the elements of morality, and the principles of 
Religion too — so far as Religion may still seem to 
be serviceable or necessary. This, it is said, we may 
all do for ourselves, without the aid of a Book. What 
need is there now for sending us to gather lessons 
from a Book, all which lessons we may find written 
in our hearts, more legibly, and with fewer admixtures 
of what is obsolete, mystical, or fabulous ? 

By those who thus speak it is granted that Chris- 
tianity did^ in its day, effect a good service for the 
nations of the West, in ridding them of the. old poly- 
theism, and in giving forth a simpler expression of 
the truths on which Religion and Worship should rest. 
But having long ago performed this service, we need 
its aid no more; it can have nothing further to teach 
us. 

Without pushing the inquiry, how far these spon- 
taneous elements of morality have, in fact, been 
borrowed from the Book, or how far the hold they 
have of us, as an authority^ is derived from a vague 



THE EESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 61 

unacknowledged reference to the SANCTIONS upon which 
that Book insists, I am willing to accept this home- 
grown morality, with all the sentiments it recognizes, 
come whence it may, and shall make an appeal to it, 
and to those sentiments, in a confident and urgent 
manner. Do not draw back from this appeal, and 
you are mine — you yield yourself to Christianity! 

No movement forward among civilized communities 
has ever come on insensibly, or as if it merely grew 
out of abstract principles. In each instance it has been 
the consequence of a visible and obtrusive course of 
events; it has been the result of a CRISIS, brought on 
by some violent shifting of the social forces; and it 
has gone forward through seasons of suffering, and 
by means of struggles, and at the cost of life. 

When the crisis has been passed, it will not suffice 
to sum up the result in a rounded paragraph of gene- 
ralities, and thus to run oflP with the benefit, forgetful 
of the conditions under which it has been obtained 
for us. Nor will it be enough, merely to assign the 
praise which may be due to those by whose labours 
and sufferings a great achievement has been brought 
to its issue. 

Take the case before us, and to which I am about 
to invite your exact attention. It is granted that 
Christianity did a service to mankind, in its time, 
by overthrowing the frivolous and absurd mythology 
and worship which the Roman world upheld, and to 
which it so resolutely clung. Through centuries 
longer these fables and superstitions might have 



62 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

retained their place. Thanks to the Martyrs, the whole 
congeries of fables was swept away ; a great clearance 
of the ground was made, and whatever might have 
been the supervening errors, that ground has been 
held open for all those advancements which we rejoice 
in, as indications of even better things to come. 

You allow that Christianity did cany the nations 
through the crisis, and did effect a change indispensable 
to the advancement of mankind; but you affirm that 
its function has long ago determined with the occasion. 
You may so think while you keep the facts at a dis- 
tance, and refuse to descend from generalities. When 
the facts come to be strictly regarded, as they should, 
then it will be seen that conditions of a very peculiar 
kind were attached to that suffering testimony, and 
to that resistance, by means of which the Christian 
body, throughout the Roman world, effected what it 
did effect in the course of two hundred years. These 
conditions imply nothing less than the reality of the 
' Christian system, and its consequent perpetuity. 

I affirm that a revolution, affecting in the deepest 
sense the wellbeing of the human family, and indis- 
pensable to its progress, drew on to its crisis, and 
passed it, in the period intervening between the ac- 
cession of Trajan and the death of Alexander Severus. 
I affirm that this revolution implies the reality of what 
had brought it on, and compels a belief which touches 
ourselves, and the future. 

The visible circumstances attending this revolution 
were such as to consist well with our supposition of 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 63 

its maguitudej and of the importance of its conse- 
quences. 

The nations of the three Continents had been drawn 
together to take their places upon one platform of 
secular administration : one system of government, 
ruled by the same political maxims, prevailed over 
the whole of this diversified surface. To one will 
all men looked, as the sovereign source of good or 
ill. All felt every moment their relationship of de- 
pendence upon the common centre; and nations the 
most remote from each other were continually made 
conscious of a relationship of welfare among themselves. 
The living organic stinicture was conscious of its struc- 
ture^ as one body. 

The period of this structural UNITY was coincident 
with the period occupied by that conflict with which 
we are now concerned. The beginning and the end 
of the Christian crisis, or the time during which the 
Church, as a body, resisted the strenuous endeavour 
of the State to maintain and enforce its own maxims 
of government — this period was synchronous with the 
structm-al unity of the Empire. When the conflict 
had reached and passed its term, which was when 
the State yielded the main point in dispute, and re- 
cognized Christianity as one among the religiones 
licitae^ then the Empire split, never again to be one 
in the same sense. During a sixty years after this 
crisis had been passed through, the conflict between 
the two parties continued to be carried on at intervals, 
but the grounds of it were not the same : when not 



64 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

attributable to the wanton ferocity of the Emperor, 
individually, or to his fanaticism, it had a political 
more than a religious meaning, and expressed the 
fears of a party which felt itself to be losing ground 
daily. 

The fact, which has often been adverted to, de- 
mands attention, that at those moments in the course 
of the struggle between the Church and the Empire 
which have the most meaning as related to the point 
in dispute, the Roman world was ruled by princes 
who have ever since occupied pedestals, as models of 
sovereign benignity, of political wisdom, and of per- 
sonal virtue. Whatever the Christian people, in some 
provinces, might suffer at the hands of ferocious magis- 
trates or emperors, or from the rabble, when the Church 
suffered in its proper character^ as the witness against 
the polytheism of the State, its enemy was always 
one of these pattern princes. 

This was no accident; for it sprung from the con- 
ditions of the contest. Whenever — passion and fana- 
ticism apart, the Roman authorities gave attention to 
the perplexing problem which Christianity had brought 
before them, and when they endeavoured to apply 
to it the only general principles of which they were 
cognizant, and to give effect to the undoubted rules 
of Roman policy toward the subjugated nations, then 
they issued edicts, which, cruel and fatal as might be 
the consequences thence resulting, did truly embody 
the unchangeable maxims of the government they 
administered. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 65 

These endeavours — violent in act, temperate in in- 
tention, to break up the perplexity which could not 
be theoretically removed — were of course renewed from 
time to time. The Master of the World, indulgent 
as he was toward the rites of the vanquished gods, 
could not allow the Cceriynoniae Romanae to be set at 
nought, nor the religion of the Empire and of all 
nations to be denounced as nugatory and vicious. 

On the part of the Christian body, willing as they 
were to yield obedience to the State, no choice was left 
them but to protest and to suffer. Thus the contest 
between the duty of the State and the conscience of 
the remonstrants was quite hopeless ; for the struggle 
could terminate in no way, but either by the exter- 
mination of the new Religion and its adherents, or the 
defeat and dishonour of the government. 

But whence came this peremptory necessity, on 
the side of the Christian body, so to protest and so 
to suffer? 

The point actually in dispute between themselves 
and the authorities, namely an external compliance 
with rites, meaning little beyond an homage rendered 
to the Emperor as patron of all religions, did not 
touch the main part of the Christian system; it was 
an incidental consequence only of this system which 
threw its adherents into collision with the State. To 
profess and maintain Monotheism was not the pecu- 
liarity of Christianity. Sages had professed this same 
belief, and had taught it; and so might these Chris- 
tians, if they would, have been content with the 

F 



66 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

promulgation of an abstract doctrine. If only they 
had gone about maintaining the purity of Theism, 
and telling the people, in a good-natured manner, that 
the gods they worshipped were no gods, though they 
might often have been roughly treated by mobs, yet 
probably they would have provoked no serious animad- 
version from the Roman government. 

Besides, if an abstract truth only had been in 
question, and if no other obligation had pressed itself 
upon Christians, beyond that of declaring and teaching 
it when and where they could gain a hearing, eva- 
sions might easily have been resorted to by themselves, 
and would gladly have been accepted at the tribunals, 
sufficient at least for the immediate purpose of screen- 
ing themselves from suffering, and of excusing the 
magistrate from the odious duty of Inflicting it. 

The stress of that compulsion which carried so 
many men, women, and youths through the endurance 
of tortures, even to death, and which brought so many 
apostates, pallid and trembling, to the tribunals, there 
to clear themselves, at the cost of their souls, of the 
fatal suspicion, — this compulsion sprang wholly from 
the perfect conviction they had of the certainty of 
that BODY OF FACTS whlch constituted, and in which 
consisted, their Religious Belief. 

The Belief of Facts, not an opinion of the truth 
of principles, was the impulsive cause of that en- 
durance of suffering which we have to consider. 

Now just at this point it has been usual to state 
the argument in behalf of Christianity thus — The con- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 67 

stancy of the Martyrs gave evidence of the sincerity 
of their faith. This faith of theirs, considering the 
nearness of the events to which it related, and the 
opportunities then at hand for sifting the evidence, 
and for detecting frauds or illusions, is proof of the 
historic reality of the system that was so accepted 
and suffered for. So it may be; but this is not pre- 
cisely the light in which I am looking at the case 
before us. 

Perhaps the suffering Church had not at any time 
given its mind with sufficient care and intelligence 
to the task of sifting that evidence on the ground of 
which it had accepted the Gospel. Its own Belief 
was indeed pronoimced in the most unfaltering tone, 
and on the strength of it life was surrendered, and 
the rack endured; but can I take this same Belief 
as my own, on the grounds of that same confidence? 
This is not absolutely certain. 



f2 



The witness-bearing of the early Church, through 
seasons of intermittent suffering, and during the hun- 
dred and fifty years to which we now confine our at- 
tention, is available in argument, either indefinitely or 
definitely. Indefinitely, and yet conclusively, if we 
choose to follow our better feelings, showing the ex- 
cellence of the Religion which was so contended for; 
its moral power also ; and, by legitimate inference, 
its truth. No fault should be found with this mode 
of reasoning; but yet we may have recourse to an- 
other. Precisely what I intend will best appear in 
giving attention to two or three of those instances of 
constancy to which imperial edicts gave occasion. 

The first of these instances possesses the advantage 
of meeting us in a form that is exempt from suspicion 
of having been dressed up or coloured, to serve a pur- 
pose. You will at once know that I have in view the 
97th Epistle of Pliny Junior, and the imperial reply 
to it. 

In this well-defined instance the perplexity of the 
Roman magistrate on the one hand, and the necessity 
he felt himself under to act as he did toward the Dis- 
sidents, and, on their part, the counter-necessity that 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 69 

compelled them to suffer, present themselves free from 
all ambiguity. 

The Propraetor found the province to which he had 
been appointed in a state to which he could not be 
indifferent. Things, as they were, could not be left 
to take their course. The mass of the people of all 
classes — multi enim omnis aetatis, omnis ordinis, utrius- 
que sexus — or, to put the lowest sense we can upon 
the language of Pliny, a large proportion of them 
had become, not simply indifferent, to the Religion of 
the State, but eager to denounce it as false, and they 
had adopted another. The temples were forsaken, the 
simulacra of the gods and of the emperor were defrauded 
of the customary homage; and, besides, stated as- 
semblages of the people were having place for pur- 
pose unknown, and therefore unlawful, and not to be 
tolerated. 

It does not appear through what remissness of the 
authorities this defection had spread so far. But this 
new representative of the Majesty of the Empire, by 
showing himself awake to his duty, and aware of 
the danger impending, had, by proclamation of im- 
perial edicts, by judicial inquests, and by the inflic- 
tion of capital punishment upon the refractory, made 
some progress in restoring law, and in recovering for 
the Ccerimoniae Romanae the lost ground, before he 
had determined to report the facts to his master, and 
ask instructions. Multitudes of the people at once 
renounced their Christianity, and cleared themselves of 
all suspicion by compliance with the sacrificial rites, 



70 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and by uttering, with the required maledictions, the 
NAME which had come to designate the new commu- 
nity. For the purpose of eiFecting these conversions 
in a legal manner, the Roman magistrate had caused 
the effigies of the gods and of the emperors to be 
brought into court. 

Can we fancy that we see them coming forward, 
dolls, or be they what they might, shouldered by the 
officers of justice, and nodding, as they came ! In 
style of art vastly superior are these simulacra to the 
hideous blocks which now grin in our museums, re- 
presentatives of the gods of Owyhee and the Sand- 
wich Islands; and yet, whether more or less sightly, 
these effigies, and the vast system of worship which 
they symbolized, were hlocksj standing In the way of 
that next great movement forward which the human 
mind was to take. 

This enlightened Roman gentleman, well conversant 
as he was with whatever had been said and taught 
by the philosophers of Greece or Rome, was conscious 
of no humiliation, he did not blush when these stupid 
symbols had been poised near him, and he, prompt- 
ing the form of appellation — praeeunte me — pointed to 
them as fit objects of devout regard ! The accused^ 
pale and trembling as they did that which he did not 
blush to exact, offered the incense and the wine, and 
departed ! 

If the Roman State, then in so advanced a con- 
dition of intellectual refinement, and when represented 
by a philosopher and a man of letters, thus showed 



THE RESTORATIOX OF BELIEF. 71 

that It was not then making, and had not made, any 
progress toward a better Theology, can it be thought 
probable that any such reform would spontaneously 
come about? Whether or not there might yet be a 
chance of some spontaneous reform,, the actual reform 
which did at length take place — the actual expulsion 
of the gods, and the riddance then effected for the 
human mind of this encumbrance, this stop to progress, 
was otherwise brought about. 

How then was it effected? Not by the silent 
spreading of an opinion, or by the gentle diffusion of 
a better Theologic Idea — platonic, or of any other 
sort; but in this severe manner, namely. That in all 
the provinces of the Roman empire, as in this of 
Bithynia, a multitude of the people, high and low, 
had accepted, as certain, a belief concerning a Per- 
son, which belief did, by an incidental consequence 
therewith connected, forbid their compliance with poly- 
theistic rites, and compel them to suffer. 

However many, at a time of alarm, might be the 
faltering and the timid, there were never wanting 
some of jBrmer moral structure, who, as Pliny here 
tells us, ^' could by no means be induced either to offer 
sacrifice to the gods, or to speak injuriously of Christ." 
Rather than do this, they endured torments, and they 
accepted death. 

This constancy of the early Christians, so severely 
tried, might well be admitted as valid proof of the 
reality of the belief on which it rested, especially 
connected as it was with a blameless morality. Such 



72 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

an admission will readily be made by every mind 
that Is fraught with moral sensibility, and which has 
not been damaged by sophistry. Every natural sym- 
pathy carries us along with the sufferers, as we stand 
in the crowd and witness the grave Inflexibility of 
some, the flushed excitement of others, of youths and 
women, and the tremors and the anguish of many 
who yet did endure to the end. Thus far, or so far 
as our truest emotions will carry us, we Involuntarily 
side with the condemned. With them we thmh that 
'' they be no gods which are graven with art and 
man's device." With them we feel^ when we see 
them led out to die rather than yield their belief, or 
be false to It. 

But might not these Christians have excused them- 
selves, and by means of some evasion have stood clear 
of consequences so frightful? Whether they might 
have done so or not. It would now be superfluous to 
inquire. They did not do so, and It was by a cen- 
tury and a-half of suffering, on the part of the Church, 
that the gods were thrown from their pedestals. 

This was the obvious part of the revolution which 
was then taking place. But another revolution — not 
obvious indeed, and yet not less Important, and not less 
indispensable In relation to the progress of the human 
mind and the development of Its higher faculties — was 
then, and by the same terrible means, brought about. 

We may just Imagine that the philosophic Pliny, 
if we could have taken him apart In his hours of re- 
laxation, might have been brought on so far as to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 73 

acknowledge that the men whom he had ordered to 
execution in the morning, were right on the great 
principle of Monotheism. This abstract doctrine was 
not new to him, and it had received the adhesion of 
illustrious sages. There stood, however, in the rear 
of this purer theology, a principle, then in course of 
development, which neither Pliny nor any man of his 
time had thought of, or could have been made to 
comprehend. Yet it is the axiom on which hinges 
the immeasurable moral diiference between classical 
antiquity and the modern mind. Even the sufferers 
in that^'early contest were not competent to put for- 
ward a clear enunciation of the principle which them- 
selves were so painfully bringing to bear upon human 
affairs. 

At present we stand clear of the question as to the 
truth of the Religion, in behalf of which the early 
Church gave its suffering testimony. We abstain also 
from what belongs to those moral and spiritual bene- 
fits which Christianity brought with it, and postpone 
also all inquiry touching its own interior beauty and 
grandeur. The one purport of these preliminary pages 
is to put in a distinct light what it was which the 
Church of the early age did for mankind in prepa- 
ration for a new moral era, and under what con- 
ditions this necessary function was discharged. If the 
same statement, somewhat varied in terms, seems to 
recur within the limit of a few pages, pardon the 
brief trespass on your patience: this repetition may 
save us time in treating those deeper subjects which 
I have mainly in view. 



74 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

A final clearance of the gods and goddesses was 
to be effected; and this, not by the gentle means 
of philosophic suasion, but by bringing thousands of 
the people, In all provinces of the Roman empire, Into 
a position of unavoidable resistance toward the govern- 
ment, neither party finding It possible to retreat from 
its ground : not the government, because the first prin- 
ciples of the empire were Impugned by this opposition ; 
not the Christian people, because it was not a mere 
opinion that sustained their opposition, but a belief 
toward a Person whose authority they regarded as 
paramount to every other. \ 

To Insist on the one side, and to resist on the 
other, were evenly-balanced necessities, of which fre- 
quent martyrdoms were the inevitable consequence. 

But this violent process, in the course of which 
an Issue in favour of the sufferers was continually 
becoming more certain, gave efifect to a principle un- 
apprehended by antiquity, and only in an indistinct 
manner, and insensibly recognized on the Christian 
side ; yet apart from which there could have been 
no such development of the human mind in the mass, 
and no such depth given to the moral faculties in- 
dividually, as have in fact come to set the modern, 
immeasurably in advance of the ancient, civilization. 

The virtue and duty of truthfulness, as between 
man and man, had been taught, and well enough 
understood, among ancient nations, whether more or 
less advanced in civilization. And so had the religious 
sanctions of morality. That one lesson which re- 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 75 

mained to be brought out, and to be wrought into 
the hearts of men, was the RELIGIOUS OBLIGATION OF- 
belief; an obligation not resting upon communities 
as a public or social charge, but pending with the 
whole of its weight upon the conscience of the in- 
dividual man; an obligation personal, a privilege un- 
alienable, and when duly discharged, a function giving 
the individual man a pledge of his immortality. 

Until this generative principle should be worked 
out as an axiom in morals, nothing could be hoped 
for as to the destinies of the human family. Now that 
it has been thus worked out, and has been accepted 
as an axiom, the aspect of human affairs can never 
be so lowering, as that we should despond concerning 
those destinies. But have we sufficiently regarded 
the fact, that this great problem was solved for us 
by the martyr Church of the century and half now 
in prospect? 

The sufferers did not know precisely what they 
were doing in this behalf; and yet, with an observable 
uniformity, the professions made before tribunals and 
on scaffolds took the true direction as related thereto. 

As it had been with Pliny, so with L. Statins Qua- 
dratus, proconsul of Asia : his personal dispositions were 
such as were becoming to a Roman magistrate ; he was 
neither sanguinary nor fanatical ; but his position in the 
province was different. The severities to which Pliny 
had allowed himself to have recourse were prompted 
Bntirely by his own sense of public duty: otherwise 
they were uncalled for. But Quadratus found him- 



76 TRE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

self pressed upon by the fanaticism of the populace : 
the rabble of Smyrna, incited, as it appears, by the 
Jews, was up, and a victim must be thrown out to 
appease the monster. 

The martyrdom of Polycarp, whatever else it may 
show or may prove, brings out distinctly those condi- 
tions of the struggle between Christianity and the State, 
to which I have already adverted. The aged bishop so 
behaved on the occasion as the rule of Christian con- 
stancy required him to behave; nor can there be al- 
leged against him any indication of fanatical excite- 
ment. He had consented to conceal himself from the 
Proconsul's officers so long as this course might fairly 
be taken. He surrendered himself to them with dig- 
nity, and these officers had, no doubt, been enjoined 
to treat so venerable a man with due respect. He was 
urged to yield so far to the authorities as might en- 
able them to screen him from the popular fury. Why 
not invoke the Emperor, and offer sacrifice ? What 
harm can there be in uttering the words Kvpce Kat- 
aap^ and then to sacrifice, and thus to save yourself? 
Kal Ovaai koL Siaaoo^eaOat, This advice, kindly in- 
tended, was importunately urged. '^ Never shall I do 
what you advise." Then if not, the time of forbear- 
ance had passed, and the aged man was thrust from 
the chariot with violence by those who had charge of 
him. 

Yet, notwithstanding the clamour of the mob, when 
the bishop's name was proclaimed in court, the Pro- 
consul used all persuasions that might shake his con- 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 77 

stancy; and in so doing he shines by the side of the 
philosopher, who, while surrounded by a trembling 
crowd, at once sends whoever would not yield, to 
capital punishment. ^' Swear by the genius of Caesar. 
Change your purpose — utter the words, ' Away with 
the Atheists.'" 

^ Away with the Atheists,' he could say in his own 
sense, and he said it with a groan. '' Then swear, 
and I will release you: revile Christ!" This might 
not be. Polycarp had been numbered with the ser- 
vants of Christ from his infancy; — his martyrdom oc- 
curred A. D. 167, or a year later ; in his youth, there- 
fore, he was contemporary with the last survivor of 
the Apostles, and thus the whole of his religious per- 
suasion resolved itself into a personal consciousness of 
facts. These facts, true or false, or partly true and 
partly illusory, constituted the ground or ultimate rea- 
son of his constancy: how could he blaspheme his 
" KiNa and Saviour" ? '' I am a Christian," and 
therefore, while professing the Christian rule to obey 
magistrates, no way of escape was opened to him, ex- 
cept that of contradicting the consciousness he had of 
his own history. 

With Polycarp this consciousness was more imme- 
diate and more personal than it could be with others, 
his contemporaries: nevertheless with them, not less 
than with himself, the ground of that Christian forti- 
tude which, in the end, prevailed over the polytheism 
of the State, was a belief toward a Person ; it was 
not an opinion as to a doctrine : and here we should 



78 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

take care to distinguish between the various motives 
that might come in to sustain the courage of a mar- 
tyr in his extremity of suffering, and the ONE GROUND 
on which his constancy rested. In the instance of the 
Bishop of Smyrna (as in that of Cyprian, probably,) 
considerations of personal honour, as the venerated 
Chief of the Christian people around him, may have 
had an influence. So might the motive to which he 
himself alludes : ^' You threaten me with a fire which 
does its work in one hour ; but you think not of the 
fire of eternal punishment that awaits the wicked." 
These, or other motives, would have shown little in- 
trinsic force, if they had rested upon an opinion : their 
power sprang from their connexion with a definite his- 
toric belief. 



It Is m the course of things that a Great Prin- 
ciple of conduct should have been long acted upon, 
perhaps for a century or more, before It comes to 
be explicitly recognized, or to be formally defined 
and registered In treatises* So It was In the present 
instance. The suffering Church had felt the sacred 
obligations of Truth, and Christians, Individually, had 
passed through the fiery trial which these obligations 
required them to meet, — compelled so to do by a 
tacit recognition of this principle, that he who fears 
God must not deny his Inward Belief, even although 
the avowal costs him life. 

The ACTS of the early martyrdoms might be copi- 
ously cited In Illustration of what Is here afiirmed. 
But at length, as was natural, the Implicit Principle 
got utterance for Itself, and It did so continually with 
more and more distinctness; It came to be defined, 
until that great Law of Conscience, which places 
the modem mind In so great an advance beyond the 
ancient mind, was allowed to stand In the very fore- 
front of ethical axioms. 

I do not know whether It might not be found 
in nearly SiB distinct a form among the earlier Chris- 



80 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

tian writings; but It is found, well and finely enun- 
ciated in that admirable Tract in which Origen deals 
so strictly with the consciences of his Christian con- 
temporaries, who were then passing through a season 
of the most severe suffering. The treatise — "urging 
to martyrdom," is of considerable length. It must 
suffice to state the drift of it, so far as it bears upon 
my present purpose. 

The terrors of torture — more than the fear of death, 
(for at that time the infliction of torture, rather than 
of death appears to have been the determinate inten- 
tion of the Roman 'authorities) had shaken the con- 
stancy of many among the Christians ; and so it was 
that pleas and evasions of every kind had been sought 
for, and had been found, by aid of which the religious 
obligations attaching to a Christian belief might be 
made to consist with a retreat from the field of con- 
flict. Origen meets and refutes these evasions, one 
by one, and in doing so he gives expression to a 
principle which we all of this age — believers and 
unbelievers, profess to think sacred, and which we 
acknowledge as the basis of personal virtue. In the 
abandonment of which all self-respect Is gone. 

Well does this confessor labour to animate the 
courage of his faltering brethren by opening before 
them the prospects of Immortality: but he hastens 
toward his main purpose, which was to snatch from 
them those evasive pleas. In search of which too many 
of them were employing an ill-directed Ingenuity. 
The timid were trying to persuade themselves that 



THE KESTORATION OF BELIEF. 81 

a genuine faith, hidden in the heart, might avail for 
ensuring their salvation ; for ^' with the heart maii 
believeth for justification" — nay, but salvation has 
another condition, which is not by us to be severed 
from the first, for, '^ with the mouth confession is made 
unto salvation;" and there might be room to think 
that a bold confession of the truth, even If the heart 
is too little animated by love to God, honours Him 
more than does a heart which withholds this con- 
fession. 

Whether we grant this or not, it must be acknow- 
ledged that this Father is here laying the foundation- 
stone of our modern sense of the stern obligation of 
religious sincerity. Yet the laying this stone, at that 
time, what courage did it demand! Such courage 
as he himself displayed in the hour of trial ! 

The Proconsul Quadratus, as we have seen, had 
vehemently urged upon Polycarp the friendly advice, 
to save himself by uttering five words — Only swear 
by the genius of Caesar, and I will let you go. It 
means nothing, or very little. It appears that the 
Christians of a later time had begun to suggest this 
very evasion, one to another, and that they were 
endeavouring to get it accredited and accepted as 
valid. Not so, says Origen: it is a hollow excuse, 
and will not save you. If it be a transgression to 
swear by Heaven, by Earth, by Jerusalem, by one's 
own head, how much greater a sin must it be to 
swear by the fortunes of another, ofivvvuL rv^V^ tlv6<;^ 
Can we dare to whisper a faithless purpose in the 

G 



82 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

presence of Him who declares that he Is jealous of 
His right over us; and to do this at the moment 
when Inquiry is made concerning our faith, and when 
torments are in sight? 'Confess me before men,' says 
Christ, ' I will confess you : deny me, and 1 deny 
you.' 

To give no place to the Devil, who is ever sug- 
gesting evasions, to allow no thoughts which tend to 
a denial of Christ to lodge in our hearts, to put 
from us the very recollection of those most dear to 
us, children and wife, or earthly possessions, — to do 
this is to satisfy the requirements of Christ: to do 
otherwise, or any thing less, is to fall short of them, 
and We must take the consequence. 

Let us note the fact that this strenuous mode 
of dealing with the infirm consciences of his brethren, 
on the part of Orlgen, and whence were to result 
benefits Incalculable to mankind, drew the whole of 
its force from an historic source^ that is to say, from 
the authority of Christ. 

When we entered, says Orlgen, upon the Christian 
life, we pledged ourselves to observe its conditions, 
to take up the cross, and to deny ourselves, even 
for His sake who shed His precious blood for our re- 
demption. 

As to the common obligations of truthfulness, as 
between man and man, they had long before been 
well understood; but now this new and higher obli- 
gation, binding man, individually, to God as the 
object of all worship and duty, came on to be en- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 83 

forced, and Origen urges It upon his brethren with 
reasons which could not be rebutted; and he sus- 
tains these reasons, not by philosophy (with which 
however he himself was conversant), but by many 
pertinent citations of Scripture. To give this higher 
obligation Its utmost force, he Infers It from the tenor 
of Christ's admonitions to his disciples, that the call 
to Martyrdom Is a divine call; It Is a summons on 
the part of God, calling upon His servants to bear 
testimony, on His behalf, before the world. Who 
shall disobey this summons, when thus It Is uttered? 
" Ye are my witnesses before all nations ; and It shall 
be given you In the hour when It Is needed, what ye 
shall speak." 

He who thus exhorted his brethren to hold fast 
their profession stedfast unto the end, did himself hold 
It fast: for although he did not die in martyrdom, 
he died of It. When a boy he had written to his 
father, then In prison as a Christian: 'Be stedfast, 
and do not think of us:' a life of labour, penury, and 
suffering for Christ's sake, was his own commentary on 
this filial and generous admonition* From his master, 
Clement of Alexandria, Origen had learned the rudi- 
ments of that doctrine which he more fiilly expounds: 
It IS, says Clement, from the love of God that we are 
to suffer as Christians. Having taken upon ourselves 
the name of Christ, If we shrink from the confession 
of Him, We are not called men of little, or of weak 
Sfalth; but of none. Thus was the Eellglous Obll- 
Igatlon of Truth Interpreted to demand suffering for 

G2 



84 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the sake of it, whenever the Christian was challenged 
to answer the question — Art thou a Christian? 

From the pages of every Christian writer of the 
second and third centurieSj passages might easily be 
cited, showing that, though differently expressed, this 
one principle was working itself forward into notice, 
until it should become the recognized law of the 
Christian profession. ' Better for us to die, than to 
live, and lie to God.' In a condensed form it stood 
thus : — It is / who now, if I dare not forego my 
hope of immortality, must endure the scourge, the 
rack, the fire ! It is / who must meet death, thus 
armed with aggravated terrors ! The question whether 
I shall face these terrors, or shall turn aside from 
them, is between God and my soul. My Christian 
brethren may indeed aid me by their plaudits and 
exhortations while I suffer, but they can neither suffer 
these torments for me, nor can they take upon them- 
selves the future consequences if I fall away, and 
deny my Lord: they cannot be condemned in my 
place. 

It was thus, and it was by a process of such ex- 
treme severity, and it was by the repetition of it in 
thousands of instances, through the lapse of more 
than two hundred years, that the most signal of all 
the revolutions which have marked the moral history 
of man was effected, and was lastingly established. 
It was thus that the INDIVIDUAL MAN was lifted up 
from his obscure place, as a unit in the mass of hu- 
manity, and was raised to his true position, and was 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 85 

Invested with his proper dignity, as related indivi- 
dually to God. It was thus, and It was amid the 
unutterable horrors of the pagan persecutions, that 
the meanest of the species, the slave, the outcast, did 
at length secure for himself, and for his peers of all 
times and countries, a formal recognition of his worth 
and rights, as the equal — in a moral estimation — of 
the noble and the learned. It was thus — even by 
the endurance of all Imaginable forms of misery on 
the part of the thousands whose names have perished 
on earth, that we, of this present time, have learned 
to regard with religious respect, and patiently to listen 
to, whoever It Is that. In the name of God, comes 
forward to profess his belief — yes, or his disbelief. 



The removal of polytheism was a great work ; 
and yet the recognition and the development of that 
Principle which assigns to man his true place and 
dignity, was a greater, or a more difficult work. Both 
were eiFected by the constancy of the Early Church ; 
both were effected by means of a long-continued 
and most severe course of suffering; and both sprung 
out of, and were inseparably connected with, a Definite 
Persuasion, as to the EVENTS of a preceding time, 
and as to the authority of a Pekson, and as to the 
authenticity of BOOKS. 

Yet the modern world has not come Into the 
enjoyment of the benefits which were thus won for 
it by the Ancient Church, without a further conflict; 
and this conflict was even more severe than the first, 
and was of much longer continuance. 

Perhaps it might be possible to glean from the 
pages of classical antiquity so many as half-a-dozen 
sentences, bearing an apparent resemblance to those 
which are found so plentifully in the early Christian 
writers, and in which the religious obligations of truth 
are affirmed. Even if it were so, the facts remain 
precisely as they were; for whatever philosophers 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 87 

might have said, they had wholly failed to gain a 
hearing for their doctrine among the people. Nor 
did the governments of those times ever recognize 
any such principle : they understood nothing of the 
sort. To the Early Church it was as if the bare idea 
had never before presented itself to the mind of man. 
The battle had to be fought on ground every inch 
of which must be contended for ; it was otherwise 
as to the assault upon polytheism, for on this ground 
a better theology had been long before propounded, 
although not accepted. 

But when at length the Church, by which we 
mean the Christian Body throughout the Roman world, 
had achieved this great service, and had given ex- 
pression to what may be called the Martyr principle, 
there followed a consequence which was to entail upon 
the world a new catena of martyrdoms. 

A consciousness of the sacred obligations of Religious 
Truth had given the ancient Martyr his constancy; 
but then a spurious counterpart of this same principle 
followed very quickly, and it served to inflame the 
fanaticism of the Persecutor, It was thus argued: 
If it be a duty we owe to God to profess the Truth, 
even at the cost of life, must it not be a duty of 
parallel obligation, to suppress and exterminate Error? 
This inference, illogical as it was, did not wait long 
to be drawn, or to be acted upon. It became an 
almost universally admitted axiom. Shall we attempt 
to number its victims? Doubtless they have been a 
thousand times as many as those that were immolated 
by the pagan authorities. 



88 TitE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

This wrong and fatal Inference, accepted so early 
as it was, came at length to be regarded as an axiom, 
needing no proof^ indeed admitting of none, for it was 
self-evident. If you would see in how cool and con- 
fiding a manner it is advanced, read the Epistles of 
Innocent III.j and the sermons of St. Bernard. 

If the mere exclusion of suffering and TRIAL 
Were the only consideration worth regarding, then one 
might be tempted to wish that the first principle — 
the Martyr doctrine — true and good as it is, had for 
ever slept^ unthought of, rather than that, in becoming 
known, it should have given occasion to the establish- 
ment of its spurious counterpart — -the Persecutor's doc- 
trine. But we are not at liberty thus to wish; we 
may not thus reason; for every thing about us shows 
that the ultimate destinies of the human family are 
not otherwise to be reached thart through deep blood- 
sodden ways of suffering, extreme in degree^ and drawn 
out through centuries. 

It is — -it must be, enough for uSj that the terrible 
results of the spurious Inference whence all persecu- 
tions have borrowed their apology, have not availed 
to deprive us of the inestimable benefits of the pre- 
vious Truth. This Truth is ours now: it is ours as 
an inheritance^ the encumbrances of which have all 
been discharged. Dare we relinquish it? When we 
do so, a night that can have no morning will be be- 
fore us* 

But at this present moment WE, that is, we Chris- 
tian men, are forbidden to entertain the thought of any 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 89 

such treason by those who (so strange sometimes are 
the shiftings of position among parties) are vehemently, 
nay even passionately, taking up the Martyr Principle 
won for us by the ancient Church, and are pleading it 
in their own behalf, while they are making their deadly 
assault upon this same Christianity ! It may be well 
to listen for a moment to this new utterance of an 
old, but not obsolete, doctrine. How is it that the 
apostles of Disbelief screen themselves from rebuke? 
It is by taking to themselves the Truth which the 
" noble army of Martyrs" purchased for the world on 
the rack and at the stake ! 

A recent writer professes his confidence that his 
reader will "judge his argument (in disproof of Chris- 
tianity) and himself, as before the bar of God." Do 
we not hear in these words the very tones of the 

Martyr Church? " If Faith be a spiritual and 

personal thing; if Belief, given at random to mere 
high pretensions, is an immorality* if Truth is not to 
be quite trampled down, nor Conscience to be wholly 
palsied in us; then what, I ask^ was I to do when I 
saw that the genealogy in the first chapter of Mat- 
thew is an erroneous copy of that in the Old Testa- 
ment, and that the writer has not only copied wrong, 
but also counted wrong, so as to mistake eighteen for 
fourteen?" 

Then, when a second and a more serious discre- 
pancy presented itself, what course did this "martyr" 
take? 

" On what ground of righteousness, which I could 



90 THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 

approve to God and my conscience, could I shut my 
eyes to this second fact?" Again, finding Christianity 
utterly indefensible : " Would it have been faithfulness 
to the God of Truth, or a self-willed love of my own 
prejudices, if I had said, I will not inquire further, for 
fear it should unsettle my faith?" To have stopped 
anywhere in this course of disbelieving would have 
been, in his view, '' sinful;" it would have been to 
'' plant the root of insincerity, falsehood, bigotry, 
cruelty, and universal rottenness of soul." 

I think I could have shown this writer, or any 
who may take the same ground, what he might have 
done amid these perplexities, which would have been 
far better than, on account of difficulties such as these, 
to renounce Christianity! But this is beside my pre- 
sent purpose. This writer thinks that, to have shrunk 
from his convictions, which ended in his entire rejec- 
tion of the Gospel, would have been " infidelity to 
God, and truth, and righteousness." 

If, indeed, the case be thus, then it is certain that 
this great Principle of the Religious Obligations of 
Truth must not be abandoned by any of us. But w^e 
may listen to another witness, who speaks to the same 
effect, and he is one whose testimony is equally un- 
exceptionable. He professes to admire the Bible, but 
he protests against its pretensions, as of divine origin, 
or as possessing any authority more than belongs to 
the Iliad, or to the Divina Comedia, or to the Para- 
dise Lost, or to Shakspeare's Macbeth: he says, "We 
may not lie to God. It may be convenient to let 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 91 

things alone; it may save cowards trouble to shrink 
from the responsibility of using honestly the faculties 
which God has given them : but it will not do in the 
long run ; and the debt of longest date bears the heavi- 
est interest." 

So thought the martyr bishop of Antioch, and the 
martyr bishop of Smyrna, and the tens of thousands 
who, in their day, have trod the same thorny path to 
a land which none shall reach who have " lied to 
God." Thus far then Believers and Unbelievers are 
entirely agreed : yet let another witness be heard ; 
and in hearing him one might think that his words 
are an echo that has come softly travelling down, 
through sixteen centuries, from some field of blood, or 
some forum, or some amphitheatre, where Christian 
men were witnessing a good confession in the midst 
of their mortal agonies ! This witness is one who as- 
sures us that "he can believe no longer, he can wor- 
ship no longer: he has discovered that the Creed of 
his early days is baseless, or fallacious." Yet he, too, 
takes up the martyr truth, that we must not lie 
to God. He is one to whom " the pursuit of Truth 
is a daily martyrdom — how hard and bitter let the 
martyr say. Shame to those who make it doubly so ! 
honour to those who encounter it, saddened, weeping, 
trembling, but unflinching still!" 

Thus far then we are all of one mind — we Chris- 
tians of this present age, and these our contemporaries, 
who denounce our belief as absurd, and they, the mar- 
tyrs of the early time, who ascertained this same moral 



92 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

rule, and, for our use, sealed it with their blood. We, 
believers and unbelievers, hold it as a fixed principle, 
as did the martyrs of old, that if we lie to God we 
consign ourselves to perdition, or to some unknown 
future woe, we know not what. 

Yet there is this difference among us, and it has 
an ominous aspect. 

We Christian men of this age, along with our 
venerated martyr brethren of the ancient Church, in 
making this profession — That we may not lie to God, 
nor deny before men our inward conviction in matters 
of religion; we (as they did) affirm that which is con- 
sistent within itself, and which, in the whole extent 
of its meaning, is certain and is reasonable, grant us 
only our initial postulate, that Christianity is from 
Heaven. 

But how is it when this same solemn averment 
comes from the lips of those who deny that postulate, 
and who scorn to recognize the voice of God in the 
BOOK? It is just thus; and those whom it concerns 
so to do, owe it to the world and to themselves, to 
make the ingenuous avowal. 

In the first place, the style and the very terms 
employed by these writers, in enouncing the fact of 
the martyrdom they are undergoing, are aU a flagrant 
plagiarism, and nothing better ! A claim, in behalf of 
the Gospel, must be made of what is its own, and 
which these writers, without leave asked, have appro- 
priated. As to every' word and phrase upon which 
the significance of this their profession turns, it must 



THE RESTORATION OP BELIEF. 93 

be given up, leaving them in possession of so much 
only of the meaning of such phrases as would have 
been intelligible to Plutarch, to Porphery, and to 
M. AuRELius. A surrender must be made of the 
words Conscience, and Truth, and Righteousness, 
and Sin ; and, alas ! modem imbelievers must be chal- 
lenged to give me back that ONE awe-fraught Name 
which they (must I not plainly say so?) have stolen 
out of the BOOK: when they have frankly made this 
large surrender, we may return to them the to Selov 
of classical antiquity. 

Yet this plagiarism, as to terms, is the smaller part 
of that invasion of rights with which the same per- 
sons are chargeable. It is reasonable, and it is what 
a good man must do, to suffer anything rather than 
deny a persuasion which is such that he could not, if 
he would, cast it off. So it was with the early Chris- 
tian martyrs : their persuasion of the truth of the 
Gospel had become part of themselves; it was faith 
absolute, in the fullest sense of the word. The same 
degree of irresistible persuasion attaches to the con- 
clusions of mathematical or physical science; but it 
never can belong to an opinion, or to an undefined 
abstract belief. A man may, indeed, choose to die 
rather than contradict his personal persuasion of the 
truth of an opinion; but in doing so he has no right 
to take to himself the martyr's style. So to speak is 
to exhibit, not constancy, but opiniativeness, or an 
overweening confidence in his own reasoning faculty. 
Polycarp could not have refused to die when the 



94 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

only alternative was to blaspheme Christ, his Lord: 
but Plutarch could not have been required to suffer 
in attestation of his opinion — good as it was — that the 
Poets have done ill In attributing the passions and 
the perturbations of human nature to the immortal 
gods ; nor Seneca, in behalf of those astronomical 
and meteorological theories with which he entertains 
himself and his friend Lucillus. 

When those who, after rejecting Christianity, talk 
of suffering for the '' truth of Grod," and speak as if 
they were conscience-bound '^ toward God," they must 
know that they not only borrow a language which 
they are not entitled to avail themselves of, but that 
they invade a ground of religious belief whereon they 
can establish for themselves no right of standing. They 
may Indeed profess what opinion they please, as to 
the Divine Attributes; but they cannot need to be 
told that which the misgivings of their own hearts 
so often whisper to them, that all such opinions 
are, at the very best, open to debate, and must al- 
ways be Indeterminate, and that at this time their 
own possession of the opinion which just now they 
happen to cling to, is, in tie last degree, precarious. 
How, then, can martyrdom be transacted among those 
whose treading is upon the fleecy clouds of undemon- 
strable religious feeling? 

Educated men should not wait to be reminded that 
those who, after abandoning a peremptory historic 
Belief, endeavour to retain Faith and Piety for their 
comfort, stand upon a slope that has no ledges: 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 95 

Atheism In its simplest form yawns to receive those 
who there stand ; and they know themselves to be 
gravitating toward it. 

It would be far more reasonable for a man to 
die as a martyr for Atheism — a stage beyond which 
no further progress is possible, than to do so at 
any point short of that terminus, knowing as he 
does that every day is bringing him nearer to the 
gulph. The stronger the mind is, and the more it 
has of intellectual massiveness, the more rapid will 
be its descent upon this declivity. Minds of little 
density, and of much airy sentiment, may stay long 
where they are, just as gnats and flies walk to and 
fro upon the honied sides of a china vase; they do 
not go down, but never again will they fly. 



THROUaH a strange misapprehension of the pre- 
sent tendency of things, within the commonwealth of 
Philosophy, those who are struggling to save the 
Pietism of Disbelief have made allusion to the 
progress of the Sciences, as threatening the imme- 
diate destruction of Christianity, We are told that 
our obsolete Creed will be rent from us by the Phy- 
sical sciences, as they advance. 

A wonderful miscalculation it is that has led astray 
those who thus think, and thus speak. The modem 
Physical sciences, Astronomy, Geology, Physiology, 
have indeed availed to dispel from Christian Belief 
this or that superstition, the demolition of which has 
occasioned pain to minds of a certain class, and has 
spread alarm among jnany ; but the issue will be wholly 
good and confirmatory. I hope hereafter to show you 
on what ground I think so; and I do not wish it to 
be supposed that I am either unmindful of the diffi- 
culties that have had their origin in this quarter, or 
that I am intending to evade the consideration of them. 
But whatever damage science may do to Christianity, 
its operation (so marvellously forgotten by the writers 
in question) will be, not to damage^ but to put right 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 97 

out of existence every form and phase of those Pletistic 
notions which it may have been thought possible to 
retain when Christianity Is gone. The fate of all those 
varieties of sentimental doctrine Is already sealed — It 
Is sealed by the hand of our modem Physical sciences ! 
How and why this should be taking place has not, 
I think, been imderstood; and I Invite attention to 
it. 

In any case when that which on any ground of 
proof takes fall hold of the understanding, (such, for 
example, are the most certain of the conclusions of 
Geology,) stands contiguous to that which, In a logical 
sense, Is of Inferior quality, and Is indeterminate, and 
fluctuating, and liable to retrogression, — in any such 
case there Is always going on a silent encroachment 
of the more solid mass upon the ground of that which 
is less solid. What is SURE will be pressing upon 
what is uncertain, whether or not the two are de- 
signedly brought into collision or comparison. What 
is well defined weighs upon, and against, what Is 111 
defined. Nothing stops the continuous involuntary 
operation of SCIENCE, in dislodging OPINION from the 
minds of those who are conversant with both. 

A very small matter that is indeed determinate, 
will be able to keep a place for itself against this 
incessantly encroaching movement; but nothing else 
can do so. As to any of those theosophic fancies, 
which we may wish to cling to, after we have thrown 
away the Bible, we might as well suppose that they 
will resist the impact of the Mathematical and Physical 

H 

I 



98 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Sciences, as imagine that the lichens of an Alpine gorge 
win stay the slow descent of a glacier. 

It Is not that these Demonstrable Sciences are likely 
to be brought designedly Into antagonism with the 
theosophles of Disbelief. But Instead of this, these 
sciences are now coming down, In one compact mass, 
upon all varieties of mere opinion: without noise are 
they coming, yet certainly, to raze them from the 
soil where they grow. Travelling In Its might, this 
solid mass will scrape the surface over which It travels 
quite bare. Nor Is it merely the Mathematical and 
Physical Sciences that In this manner are edging 
opinion out of the Intellectual world; for In the train 
of these come the Statistical, the Economic, and the 
Political sciences, which every day are assuming a 
more positive tone than heretofore, and are more ar- 
ticulate than any Religious opinions can be, unless 
sustained by evidence of the most conclusive sort. 
Deductions that are Indisputable — principles that have 
a near bearing upon the palpable welfare of the com- 
mimlty, not less than the higher truths of philosophy, 
tend to disengage the mind from whatever does not 
possess equal or similar recommendations. Men sicken 
of endless surmises, of guesses, of aspirations, of Im- 
pressions, of vague hopes. Now it is manifest that 
the Religious Disbelief which Is at this time offered 
to us in the stead of Christianity, neither does, nor 
can, in the nature of things, take possession of solid 
ground whereupon it might establish and fortify itself. 
At the very best it is only a pleasing possibility, or 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 99 

a probability, — a something better than nothing. Itself, 
from a consciousness of its own slendeniess, will be 
glad to slip away, mmoticed, from the halls of science. 

This process, sealing the fate of theosophic systems 
of all sorts, does not indeed bear upon the masses of 
the religious community. Happily it does not; but 
it does bear upon the entire community of well-in- 
structed men; and from them the eflfect which it pro- 
duces spreads itself, outward and downward, until a 
paralysing of the religious sentiment has gone far and 
wide ; and this is what is now taking place, and which 
calls for a fresh recurrence to the very substance of 
Christianity, as the only means that can be trusted to 
for bringing about a Restoration of Belief. 

We must not allow ourselves to imagine that the 
relative position of Natural Philosophy and of Re- 
ligious Philosophy at all resembles what it was at the 
time when Christianity prevailed over philosophy and 
polytheism; for the theories of that age did not stand 
liable to any such pressure from without, as that 
which now weighs upon their modem representatives. 
The Theology of that epoch was not less approvable to 
reason than was the Physical science of the same time : 
both were surmises only; and, on the whole, fewer 
positive absurdities were comprised in the theology than 
in the science of the times. The science of antiquity 
could call scarcely anything within its compass certain^ 
except its geometry and its applicates ; nor was it itself 
in a progressive condition : it slept on its ground, and 
was not more likely to dislodge its neighbour, the 

h2 



100 THE RESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 

Theology of the same time, than one of the pyra- 
mids is likely to shove another Into the Nile. 

It Is an Illusion to Imagine that any scheme of 
religious belief can now maintain Itself In the minds 
of Instructed men, under the enormous pressure of the 
compacted mass of our modem sciences. A most mis- 
judging course, therefore, have those writers adopted 
who, of late, have threatened Christianity with ex- 
tinction, which they say Is to be effected by the hand 
of the Physical sciences ! Do they not see that there 
Is a victim that stands first to be immolated— to wit, 
their own baseless theology? 

But why may not Christianity itself share this same 
fate? Is it not itself an opinion? This will be the 
end of every one of those modifications of Christianity 
which have been devised for the purpose of escaping 
from its extreme consequences, or of mitigating its 
supposed severity, or of winning the favour of those 
who reject it. These varieties of w^hat we must call 
an abated Christianity, are opinions only; and they 
entirely lack Intelligible evidence, as well as substance 
and motive force: they stir no affections; they fix no 
resolves; they breathe no such energy into the souls 
of men as should strengthen them in a course of real 
sufferings for the Truth's sake. 

What is it then that may, and that will^ hold its 
ground against the ever-Increasing momentum of our 
modem philosophy? It is that Christianity, whole 
and entire, which, filling as it did the mind and the 
heart of the Early Church, carried it through its 
day of trial. 



THE RESTORATION OP BELIEF. 101 

I now therefore reach the point which I have had 
in view in this preliminary Tract; my purpose being 
to explain my meaning in professing to think that a 
Kestoration of Belief, at this time, demands that we 
should make our way direct into the heart of the 
question, and reclaim for the Gospel its own grandeur, 
its own beauty, its own boundless compass of Truths 
eternal. 

Hitherto we have confined our attention to the 
Martyr age of Christianity, and have considered how 
the men of that time, while they so ^' fought the good 
fight of faith," rendered a service to the world, the 
benefits of which can never leave it. But can any one 
persuade himself that this war could have been waged 
on the strength of any of those abated notions of 
Christianity which we are now required to accept in- 
stead of itself? We may be sure it could not have 
been so: we know it was not so. The faith of the 
Martyr Church was undoubting in its quality, and 
ample in its compass. The martyr confronted his 
tormentor, and welcomed death, in the perfect assu- 
rance that the Religion he professed was from Heaven, 
and that it had come into the world attested by 
Miracles. 

Such a persuasion, we may think, cost this martyr 
little; for it was an age (so it is said) of ready belief. 
Men believed on slender evidence, or on none. It is 
of no consequence to dispute this : let it be granted. 
But if the credulity of the age made it easy for the 
Christians of that time to accept a religion professing 



102 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

miraculous attestations, this willingness to believe sprang 
from a feeling, the vividness of which we, of this age, 
can scarcely imagine. The men of the martyr time 
had found in Christianity that which outmeasured all 
miracles; to them the new spiritual existence which 
they had drawn from the Gospel, was, a Miracle 
with which those of the Evangelic history seemed in 
perfect accordance. What they felt in themselves, 
and saw in others, of the power of the Gospel, was 
to them a resurrection, equivalent to the miraculous 
healing of the sick, or raising of the dead. 

But is it not '' reasoning in a circle" thus to be- 
lieve the miracles because the religion is felt to be 
from Heaven, and to believe the religion, because it 
has been attested by miracles? Grant it that this ts 
a reasoning in a circle, when formally stated; but it 
does not follow that the reasoning is not good in 
its substance. A misapprehension on this ground has 
too easily been admitted, as well on the side of those 
who have conducted the Christian argument, as with 
those who have impugned it. A sophism, boldly ob- 
truded on the one side, has been timidly dealt with 
on the other. 

The very firmest of our convictions come to us 
In this very same mode, — that is, not in the way 
of a sequence of evidences, following each other as 
links in a chain, and carrying with them the con- 
clusion; but in the way of the CONGRUITY of evi- 
dences, meeting or collapsing in the conclusion. This 
is not what is called " cumulative proof," nor is it 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 103 

proof derived from the coincidence of facts. Those 
impressions which command the reason and the feel- 
ings in the most imperative manner, and which we 
find it impossible to resist, are the result of the meet- 
ing of congruous elements: they are the product of 
causes which, though independent, are felt so to fit 
the one the other, that each, as soon as seen in 
combination, authenticates the other; and in allowing 
the two to carry our convictions, we are not yielding 
to the sophism which consists in alternately putting 
the premises in the place of each other, but are re- 
cognizing a principle which is true in human nature. 
You have to do with one who offfers to your eye 
his credentials — his diploma, duly signed and sealed, 
and which declare him to be a Personage of the high- 
est rank. All seems genuine in these evidences. At 
the same time the style and tone, the air and be- 
haviour, of this Personage, and all that he says, and 
what he informs you of, and the instinictions he gives 
you, are in every respect consistent with his preten- 
sions, as set forth in the Instrument he brings with 
him. It is not then that you alternately believe his 
credentials to be genuine, because his deportment and 
his language are becoming to his alleged rank; and 
then that you yield to the impression which has been 
made upon your feelings by his deportment, because 
you have admitted the credentials to be true. Your 
Belief is the product of a simultaneous accordance of 
the two species of proof: it is a combined force that 
carries conviction, not a succession of proofs in line. 



104 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

It is from the same force of Congruity, not from a 
catena of proofs, that we receive the most tinistworthy 
of those impressions upon the strength of which we 
act in the daily occasions of life ; and the same Law 
of Belief rules us also in the highest of all arguments 
— that which issues in a devout regard to Him, by 
and through Whom are all things. On this ground, 
where logic halts, an instinctive reasoning prevails, 
which takes its force from the confluence of reasons. 

I have asked it to be supposed that all we can 
now know of Christianity must be derived from the 
literary materials of the second and third centuries. 
We now go back to those materials. They are 
various, if not of very great absolute bulk : they 
include contributions from the pens of fifty or sixty 
writers, some of these being voluminous, some 
amounting to fragments only, or paragraphs or sen- 
tences : but then they are Contributions gathered from 
all quarters of the Roman World. These remains bring 
to our hearing, as we might say, the voices of the 
dwellers in Palestine, Asia Minor, Egypt, North Africa, 
Graul, Italy, and Greece ; what we listen to is a testi- 
mony coming in from a large surface. These variously 
derived materials constitute so many segments of a 
great circle, the centre of which they will enable us 
to determine, if we rightly bring them to their 
places: the radii, projected from these segments, meet 
in a central point. 

A striking unanimity of feeling pervades the mass; 
and yet along with much diversity of style, the tern- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 105 

per of the men also being everywhere conspicuous, 
as well as the characteristics of country. The subjects 
treated of are various also. Nevertheless, as to the 
CENTRAL OBJECT of which these materials give us our 
idea, the uniformity — the Identity of Image is such, 
and it is of such intensity, that it moulds to its own 
fashion the mind of every ingenuous reader: he can- 
not refuse to yield his reason and imagination too, to 
this ONE IDEA : undoubtedly it is everywhere the same 
PERSON whom he encounters in these scattered memo- 
rials of a distant time ! 

One of the purposes I have had in view in thus 
bringing forward the persons and events of the Martyr 
age, and in keeping the eye fixed upon that limited 
field, was this, to render more easy a mental effort 
by which we put out of sight the bearing of Chris- 
tianity upon ourselves, and discharge from our feel- 
ings that which haunts our minds, tiie thought that 
it may touch and disturb ourselves. 

In now summing up, I entreat you to make this 
effort, and to imagine that Christianity has long ago 
ceased to hold any place of influence in the world; 
and that it stands before us only as a singular de- 
velopment of the religious and moral elements of 
human nature, which has had its season, and which 
now stands on record, an insulated object of historic 
curiosity. If now you will go with me so far, in- 
genuously grant such things as you would not think 
of denying, if relieved from all anxiety as to conse- 
quences, touching ourselves. I will therefore suppose 
you to allow these things. — 



106 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

— That the Christian communities did, during the 
period that we have had in view, make and main- 
tain a protest against the idol-worship of the times, 
which protest, severe as it was in its conditions, at 
length won a place in the world for a purer The- 
ology, and set the civilized races free from the de- 
grading superstitions of the Greek Mythology. 

— That, in the course of this arduous struggle, and 
as an miobserved yet inevitable consequence of it, a 
New Principle came to be recognized, and a New 
Feeling came to govern the minds of men, which 
principle and feeling conferred upon the individual 
man, however low his rank, socially or intellectually, 
a dignity, unknown to classical antiquity; and which 
yet must be the basis of every moral advancement 
we can desire, or think of as possible. 

— That the struggle whence resulted these two mo- 
mentous consequences, affecting the welfare of men 
for ever, was entered upon and maintained on the 
ground of a definite persuasion, or Belief, of which 
a Person was the object. 

— That this belief toward a Person, embraced at- 
tributes, not only of superhuman excellence and wis- 
dom, but also of superhuman power and AUTHORITY. 
If we take the materials before us as our guide, it 
will not be possible to disengage the history from 
these ideas of superhuman dignity. 

If in any instance that can be thought parallel, 
the concentric testimony of many writers conveys the 
idea of a clearly-defined Individuality, such an idea, 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF, 107 

such a conception of a Person, real, and unlike others, 
IS conveyed by the evidence now in our hands; and 
this idea indissolubly blends the historic and the super- 
natural ; the two elements of character, as combined, 
possess a FORCE OF CONGRUITY which compels our 
submission to it. Whence then came this Idea? We 
find it on the pages of the early Christian writers in 
a form so consentient, and it is conveyed in language 
so sedate and so uniform, that we must believe it to 
have had ONE source. 

Much do we meet with in these writers that indi- 
cates infirmity of judgment or a false taste ; yet does 
there pervade them a marked simplicity, a grave sin- 
cerity, a quietness of tone, when He is spoken of 
whom they acknowledge as Lord. If there be one 
characteristic of these ancient writings that is uniform^ 
it is the calm, affectionate, and reverential tone in 
which the Martyr Church speaks of The Saviour 
Christ ! 

I am perfectly sure that, if you could absolutely 
banish from your mind all thought of the inferences, 
and the consequences, resulting from your admissions, 
you would not, after perusing this body of Martyr- 
literature, fall into the enormity of attributing the 
notions entertained of Christ, as invested with Divine 
attributes, to any such source as " exaggeration," or 
" extravagance," or to '' orientalism," or '' enlarged 
Platonism." Exaggeration and inflation have their 
own style: it is not difficult to recognize it. No 
characteristic of thought or language is more obvious. 



108 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

You will fall In your endeavour to show that this 
characteristic does attach to the writings in question ; 
and why should you make such an attempt? There 
can be no inducement to do so, unless it appears to 
be the only means of escaping from some consequence 
which we dislike. 

But how can it be that a resumption of the In- 
ference which Christianity brings to bear upon our- 
selves, should affect the admissions we have made while 
that inference was held in abeyance? It can never 
be logical to say, '' I would not have granted you 
so much, if I had foreseen what use you would have 
made of my concessions." We must abide by our 
concessions, If they have been reasonably granted, come 
what may. 

That which these concessions Involve Is this, that 
unless we at once allow the Supernatural and the 
Divine to have belonged to Christianity at Its rise, 
our alternative Is to fill up the void by aid of some 
hypothesis which shall give an Intelligible account of 
what we know to have followed, wherever It was 
proclaimed, throughout the Roman world. As to any 
such hypothesis (several have been devised) I will not 
call them Inadmissible, or Insufficient; for to me they 
are wholly unintelligible. 

Unintelligible are these hypotheses, even when looked 
at in the coldest manner from the ground of historical 
criticism. But how revolting do they seem when the 
course of events through the lapse of centuries, Is re- 
garded In any manner that might deserve to be called 
philosophic ! 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 109 

The dark mysteries that attach to the course of 
human affairs, who shall profess to interpret? No one 
undertakes such an office. Nevertheless we may trace 
single lines of causation with perfect certainty : we may 
follow a clue up from Effects to Causes, and we may 
discover causes which, in their quality and their effi- 
ciency, are such as the effect demands. We may safely 
reject, as by instinct, an hypothesis which assumes to 
trace great and extensive effects to causes that would 
be not merely insufficient, but which are utterly in- 
congruous and unfit. 

Remove from Christianity every thing in it which is 
supernatural and divine, and then the problem which 
we have to do with is this.— A revolution in human 
affairs, in the highest degree beneficial in its import, 
was carried forward upon the arena of the great world, 
by means of the noble behaviour of men who com- 
mand our sympathy and admiration, as brave, wise, 
and good. But this revolution drew the whole of 
its moral force from a Belief, which — how shall we 
designate it ?— was in part an inexplicable illusion ; 
in part a dream, and in large part a fraud! This, 
the greatest forward movement which the civilized 
branches of the human family have ever made, took 
its rise in bewildered Jewish brains ! Indistructible 
elements of advancement to which even infidel nations 
confessedly owe whatever is best and most hopeful 
within them, these elements of good, which were 
obtained for us at so vast a cost, had their source in 
a congeries of exaggerations, and in a mindless con- 



110 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

splracy, hatched by chance, nursed by imposture, and 
winged by fanaticism ! 

While I must speak of the Theories that have been 
propounded for solving the problem of Christianity, 
on natural principles, in no measured terms, I would 
not be thought disposed to treat slightly the catalogue 
of difficulties that attach to the Christian argument, 
at specific points. Real are some of these difficulties; 
and some are fatal to certain gratuitous assumptions, 
held to on the Christian side : not one of them 
should be inconsiderately dismissed. But not one of 
them touches the Integrity of our Faith; nor can the 
mass entire avail at all to abate the confidence of our 
persuasion, that the Gospel of Christ is from Hea- 
ven, and carries with it an AUTHORITY which Time 
does not impair, and which Eternity shall unfold and 
confirm. 

When a collection of historic materials, bearing upon 
a particular series of events, is brought forward, it will 
follow upon the supposition that those events have, 
on the whole, been truly reported, that any hypothesis 
the object of which is to make it seem probable that 
no such events did take place, must involve absurdities, 
which will be more or less glaring. But then, after 
the truth of the history has been established, and 
when the trustworthiness of the materials has been 
admitted, as we proceed to apply a rigid criticism to 
ambiguous passages, we shall undoubtedly encounter 
a crowd of perplexing disagreements ; and we shall 
find employment enough for all our acumen, and trial 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. Ill 

enough of our patience, in clearing our path. And yet 
no amount of discouragements, such as these, will war- 
rant our falling back upon a supposition which we have 
already discarded as incoherent and absurd. 

This then is the present state of the argument as 
to Christianity. As to those inroads which of late 
have been made upon the Belief of well-informed 
Christians, they have been effected by urging ex- 
ceptive cases, and by bringing forward instances of 
historic misplacement, or contradiction, affecting the 
credit of the Inspired writers, or by inference, bringing 
into question the Divine authority of the collection 
of books. On this ground the course that should be 
taken, though it be arduous, is straight before us. 

To propound difficulties pressing upon a Christian 
belief, is one thing; but to propose a theory that 
might be accepted as affording an intelligible solu- 
tion of the problem which demands to be dealt with, 
when we disallow the claims of Christianity as from 
Heaven, is a very different matter. On this ground, 
I do not see that any advantage has been gained 
on the side of Disbelief. Our English disbelief can 
pretend to nothing of originality; for it is all a copy 
after the German; and yet German theories, though 
they have broken down, in quick succession, at home, 
have been imported, as if still good, and have been 
done into English without scruple : is there one of 
these theories that is not insufferably absurd? 

This is as it should be, on the supposition, That 
Christianity is true : the difficulties which adhere to 



112 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the mode of its transmission, may still be insoluble ; 
yet to devote primary attention to these would only 
have the eflfect of giving our thoughts, as well as 
feelings, a wrong direction. A better course is, first 
to assure ourselves of the substance of our Belief: 
we may then, with comfort and advantage, meet the 
exceptive argument in its particulars. 



THE QUESTION OF CHRISTIANITY IS DETERMINABLE. 

We are told that Christianity must be content to take 
its place along with many indeterminate questions^ which 
are, and which should be spoken of among reasonable 
men as " matters of opinion." 

I deny this allegation ; and I take my position, with 
all humility, yet fearlessly, on this opposite ground, 
namely : that, if those modes of proceeding which 
have been authenticated as good in other cases, are 
allowed to take effect in this case, nothing in the entire 
round of human belief is more infallibly sure than 
is Christianity, when it claims to be — Religion, given 
TO Man by God. 

The same proposition, stated exceptively, may be thus 
worded. Christianity can be held in question only by 
aid of violence done to established principles of reasoning, 
and by contempt of the laws of evidence, which in all 
cases analogous to this are enforced. 

I must not be misinterpreted in this instance. Per- 
sonally, I might take in hand to demonstrate some 
unquestionable theorem in geometry, or to establish the 
most certain of the conclusions in the circle of the phy- 

l 



114 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

sical sciences ; and I might so mismanage the process as 
to make those things seem doubtful which^ in fact, are 
absolutely certain. The question just now, is not whether 
an individual writer succeeds or fails in bringing a de- 
monstrable argument to a true conclusion ; which may 
happen or not ; but whether the argument itself be 
demonstrable or not. 

Grant me therefore so much liberty as this, at starting, 
that is to say — allow me to fail in my present honest 
endeavour, yet WITHOUT prejudice to my cause. 
Grant me this, and I will repay your candour with an 
equivalent. I shall impute no bad motives to you as a 
cover to my chagrin in finding that I do not bring you 
over to my side : I shall not tell you that your resistance 
to my reasoning is nothing but an immoral obduracy, 
springing from the corrupt wishes of an " unregenerate 
heart." It may be so in fact ; but that is your affair, 
not mine. '^ Let a man examine himself.'''' I am no 
Inquisitor, nor Father Confessor; nor do I profess to be 
a spiritual adviser. 

Besides, I am not about to deal in persuasives, or to 
be eloquent and ingenious. I would not lay a hand 
upon this argument at all if I did not find it hard to 
the touch, in every part of it. 

We all perfectly know that the only style proper to 
the exposition of absolute Truth is that which indicates 
no consciousness whatever of the surmised dispositions, 
or adverse feelings, or prejudices, of those who are ad- 
dressed. Euclid deals with every body alike : he knows 
nothing of men's tempers. It is thus that, in working 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 115 

our way toward the mere truth of any mass of facts, 
debated in Court, we listen with breathless attention, 
as if an inspired person were about to speak, to 
the evidence of an intelligent and guileless child ; 
for we suppose that this child does not know, or 
knowing, does not care, how his statement will tell upon 
the suit, or how it may gratify, or irritate, or appal, the 
plaintiff, or the defendant. This child-testimony is just 
the noiTQal style of a purely scientific treatise; and it 
should serve as sampler to an argument that is professed 
to be thoroughly honest. 

A style much less inartificial than this has prevailed, 
on both sides, in the argument concerning Christianity. 
How this has come about on the side of Disbelief, 
it does not concern me to inquire. On the side of 
Belief it has had entrance in such ways as these : — 
Perhaps a writer who himself is sincerely j rather than 
jperfectly persuaded, labours, from page to page, under 
the weight of a lurking uneasiness or misgiving, as to 
the goodness of the cause he has taken in hand. Or 
perhaps his amiable temper and his abhorrence of 
dogmatism, impel him to employ so many softnesses 
of language, and to abound so much in uncalled- 
for concessions, that the reader loses hold of an 
argument of which the writer is continually losing his 
hold. Perhaps — and this is often the fact — the Chris- 
tiain advocate, being also a minister of religion, and 
in that capacity having much to do, from week to week, 
with the levity of the human mind, and its perversity, 
its indifference, and its obduracy, and thus forecasting 

I 2 



IIG THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the rejection of his argument — unimpeachable as it may 
be, draws back from a peremptory statement of it, lest 
he should risk too much in boldly challenging the 
readers' submission. He will not pledge Christianity 
where he foresees that he shall find a contumacious 
resistance. 

Expect no such gentle obliquities in these pages. I 
am not provided with slender conventionalisms of this 
kind ; — ^^ Ought we not to grant ?" — ^^ Is it not reason- 
able to suppose ?" — ^^ Can we imagine this or that ?" — 
" Every candid mind will allow ;" and so forth. But 
then if I abstain from the use both of lenitives and of 
irritating stimulants, I protest against every sort of 
argumentative violence, or polemical outrage. What I 
mean by this protest is this. We are about to make our 
way, in company, through a mansion, the doors of which, 
•inner and outer, are locked ; but I carry a master-key in 
my hand. Every door opens instantly by application of 
these fair means. You must not then bring with you a 
crow-bar, or a sledge hammer ; as if you would be im- 
patient of the use of the key. You must not bring 
forward, hy preferences a violent supposition to avert an 
apprehended consequence. Let the key take its course 
wherever it suffices, and I am content. 

What then are the conditions of a proposition which 
should be regarded as a " matter of opinion ?" In con- 
nexion with an argument like this, the vague truism will 
not serve us — That an ^^ opinion is a proposition con- 
cerning which even the best informed men may differ 
without imputation, either of wrong motives, or of in- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 117 

competency." On this ground^ we need to be better 
guarded against misapplications of the word. 

A proposition concerning facts may be indeterminable 
in consequence of some hopeless deficiency of the extant 
evidence which relates to it ; or there may attach to it 
an ambiguity in consequence of the occult quality of 
the facts in question. But these indeterminate pro- 
positions, fairly assignable, to the region of opinionj 
and which are open therefore to endless discussion, may 
belong to one, as well as to another of the departments of 
science, of philosophy, or of criticism. It is a mistake, 
and a prejudice, fertile in errors, to imagine that Opinion 
belongs to one department, and Certainty to other 
departments ; as if the honours and immunities of an 
exemption fi^om the tolls of controversy were the class- 
privilege of this or that aristocratic science. 

Every science, how absolute soever it may be in its 
methods of proof, has its indeterminate verge — its open 
territory of opinion, so long as it is in a progressive con- 
dition. Until a science pronounces itself to have reached 
its culminating point, there is always stretching out in 
front of it a region over which adventurous speculation 
takes its course, and whereupon no authority better than 
that of opinion has as yet been recognized. 

Mathematical Science, we are told, is still in pro- 
gress, and, therefore, over this region, even over this, or 
rather in front of it, there hovers the ^^ pillar of a cloud" 
— a cloud of promise, leading the way over the sands of 
the infinite, toward further conquests. 

As to the Physical Sciences, if what has been 



118 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. .^^, 

ascertained within their compass would fill twenty folios 
^the matters next outlying beyond these, and which 
yet are sufficiently defined to be susceptible of intelligible 
statement, would fill a hundred folios. 

As to those branches of science, or of criticism, 
the bearing of which is upon Individual Facts, 
and which deal with Evidence — no greater error could 
be fallen into than that of supposing that, in any 
special sense, we are here entering upon the trackless 
region of opinion. In truth, as to the relative amount 
of the certain and the uncertain — of the determinate and 
the indeterminate — of that which is open to discussion, 
or is closed against it, and sealed for ever, as infallibly 
sure, those departments upon which evidence (in the 
technical sense of the word) bears, show a decisive ad- 
vantage, as compared with the boundless domains of the 
physical sciences. It is so on two grounds : — Ftrstj as 
to the nature of the subjects respectively treated of; and 
secondly J as to the symbols, or medium of conveyance, 
from mind to mind. 

The Physical Sciences, as they relate to the powers, 
properties, functions, of the material world, inorganic 
and organised, touch the mere surface of an abyss that 
is unfathomable. The things concerning which they 
treat are, more or less, occult, and, for a great part, are 
inscrutable, as well by the human senses, as by human 
reason. Besides which, these sciences are compelled to 
express themselves in a medium which has been bor- 
rowed for their use, and which, is very imperfectly 
adapted to the purposes it is now made to serve. 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 119 

Mathematical Science has created its own symbols^ as 
fast, and as far, as it has needed them : they are exempt 
from all ambiguity; and the truths conveyed by them 
are not attempted to be expressed any further than they 
are thoroughly understood. 

Parallel advantages attach to the various departments 
over which EVIDENCE holds sway ; for the facts, with 
few exceptions, are thoroughly intelligible, and the 
medium of conveyance — the language of common life, 
has itself grown out of, or is the spontaneous pro- 
duct of this very class of facts. Language is at 
home when it is framed into propositions, concerning 
individual facts, sustained by evidence ; but it is doing 
a work wholly strange to itself when it is giving expres- 
sion to the generalizations of Physical Science. 

So long as the Latin language lives, it will always be 
perfectly known what sort of event was intended to be 
recorded when an accomplished nephew affirms, concern- 
ing his learned uncle, that — Innitens servulis duobus, as- 
surrexit, et statim concidit : but when we turn to those of 
this learned writer's pages in which he ti'ies his hand at 
the scientific explication of natural phenomena, as of 
thunder storms (ii. 43) or when Seneca gives his theory 
of earthquakes (Nat. Quest, iv. 5) we feel, first that the 
things spoken of by these great men were immensely far 
beyond their cognizance ; and secondly that the terms in 
which they laboiu'ed to convey their own confused no- 
tions concerning these things are too indeterminate to 
have admitted, either then or now, any very certain 



120 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



interpretation. Nor ought we to assume very much 
more in behalf even of our modem scientific speculations; 
for a time may come when a modern lecture, upon — 
the theory of volcanoes — even if the English language 
should live so long as a thousand years, may read 
like mere jargon ; or it may require many pages of 
learned exposition to be spent upon it, before it can be 
known at all what the writer could be thinking of when 
he talks about " a disturbance of the equilibrium of 
Galvanic forces," and the like. The narrative — the 
history is just as intelligible now, as it was eighteen 
centuries ago; and it will retain the whole of its bright 
vivacity to the end of time; so that this one entry 
upon the page of universal history has a better chance 
for eternity than have the pyramids. But as to a large 
portion of our modern Physical Science — every century, 
as it passes, overlays it with a coating of obscurity, 
inasmuch as the theories of each era are superseded by 
those of the next ; and inasmuch too, as the terms con- 
veying it, having no real relationship to the things they 
intend, lose almost all hold of those things in the 
lapse of time, and cease to be easily intelligible. In 
respect of the events of the Trojan war — ^whether the 
Iliad be history or fable, the Greek language carries a 
meaning that is unchangeably certain, for ever ; but in 
respect of Aristotle's astronomy, or of Plato's scheme 
of the universe, nothing can keep the very terms in an 
intelligible condition, but a running commentary — re- 
issued from age to age. 



1 



THE KESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 121 

Christianity must not then be set off, to take its place 
among indeterminate questions — among ^^ matters of 
opinion," merely because it stands before us as an entry 
upon the page of history; for it stands there in company 
with things as sure as the surest theorems of geometry. 
What it teaches — or some of those things, may be, and 
are, matters of opinion ; but not itself. 

You say " Christianity is an exceptive instance, 
because it comes to us laden with miracles, which no 
evidence can avail to authenticate ; and in truth we are 
granting it more indulgence than it can rightfully claim, 
when we concede to it any footing at all upon the ground 
of rational argumentation. Let Christianity rid itself of 
the SUPERNATUEAL, and then we will think about it." 

You cannot take this course ; and my purpose in this 
present Tract is to close it against you. 

Authentic history comes into our hands along with a 
large mass of adventitious matter, which is not of itself ; 
and from which it may easily be distinguished without 
any damage to itself, or much disparagement to the 
repute of the original writers. Of this sort are those 
statements of alleged facts for the truth of which the 
historian does not very explicitly pledge himself; and 
concerning which we may easily suppose him to have 
been innocently in error : — also — of this sort are his own 
opinions, his reasonings, and his surmises, which are 
worth just what they may be worth : — also the entire mass 
of indirectly asseverated narratives — matters of tradition, 
matters of national belief, or of popular contemporaneous 
parlange. 



122 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

NoWj as to the connexion of all such extraneous 
matters with authentic history, I apply to it, for the 
purpose of my present argument, this phrase and say — 
the tie between the two masses is that merely of 
ADHESION ; for a removal of the adhesive portions may be 
effected without violence : it may be done without draw- 
ing blood ; and as to the historian himself, he wdll 
scarcely be conscious of the operation. In how pleasant 
a manner have many such removals been effected in the 
instance of the ^^ Father of History," who, in truth, as a 
veracious collector of facts, enjoys better repute among us 
now, than he did a century ago. 

But there is another bond of union, connecting a 
body of history with what it brings with it, which 
implies more than mere adhesion, and which must 
be regarded as implying a connexion of COHESION. 
Wherever the tie is of this kind, an attempted separation 
of the two masses touches the life, and we should look 
well to the consequences before we set about it. I 
affirm that, in the instance of the canonical documents 
of Christianity, the connexion of the historic mass with 
the supernatural, is a case of cohesion, and that it is ab- 
solutely indissoluble. 

When an instance of this sort presents itself, one of 
three courses may be taken : that is to say, the three 
courses are hypothetically eligible ; which of them is ac- 
tually so can be known only upon inquiry. 

1st, We may wholly reject the conglomerate — the his- 
tory and the miracle together, as being manifestly des- 
titute of any intrinsic value. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 123 

2nd, We may apply force — retaining the simply 
historic mass, and throwing off the mass cohering. But 
when this is done the patient dies : — that is to say, the 
credit of the writer, or in other words, his vitality as a 
writer is gone, even although much that he has recorded 
may still be quite true : we have slain the man ; but if 
he carried anything about him that is valuable, we take 
it to ourselves. 

3dly, We may accept at once the simply historic 
mass, and that which coheres with it, as being both 
true, and both historic. 

The course of argument, therefore, in relation to Chris- 
tianity must be this: — In behalf of it, it should be 
shown, first — That the alliance of the historical and 
the supernatural which it offers to our view is not an 
instance of mere adhesion ; but of indissoluble cohesion. 

We must then show that, unless violence is to be 
done to every principle which is applicable to the 
occasion, the conglomerate cannot be cast aside, as un- 
substantial, or as destitute of value ; inasmuch as the 
historical portion is of indisputable validity : — ^it is sure, 

if anything be sure. 

But no endeavours, fairly made, can avail to disjoin 
the supernatural, in this case, from the historical. In 
other terms stated — within the compass of the canonical 
documents of Christianity the supernatural is one and the - 
same as the historical. The two can be accounted twoy 
by hypothesis only. Moreover the two elements — 
if they be two — coalesce into one mass, not merely by 
cohesion, of which just now I am to speak; for they 



124 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

are still more intimately blended by the force of CON- 
GRUITY, to which I have already (page 102) made 
allusion, and of which, in another Tract, I shall have 
much to say. Whether or not the alleged cohesion of 
the historic and the supernatural should be incontestibly 
established, the connexion of Congruity, laying hold as 
it does of the firmest of our convictions, stands entire ; 
and it is such as has availed, and will always avail, 
with the mass of unsophisticated minds, to ensure 
an unclouded belief. 

The ground of an argumentation, such as is now 
in hand, has been gradually narrowing throughout the 
course of the present half-century. It is mainly the 
industry of adverse criticism that has thus cleared 
the way before us ; or more fairly stated, it has been 
the assidu.ous antagonism of Christian, and of Anti- 
christian scholarship, working with unwearied zeal at 
the same problems, that has achieved this service. 
On the one part, an attenuated ingenuity has spent its 
last atom of gluten in floating out threads which might 
perchance catch and detain, in behalf of Scepticism, this 
or that portion of the apostolic remains. On the other 
part, an overdone scrupulosity, and a superfluous candour, 
has employed itself in loosening the hold of these 
films — one by one. 

The upshot of all this industry is just this, that, after 
two or three ambiguous cases have been allowed for, 
the apostolic antiquity of the several portions of the 
New Testament canon is out of question; and that, 
as to the Epistles (with which alone I am at present 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 125 

concerned) the genuineness and authenticity of these 
writings rests upon evidence one-tenth part of which has 
been customarily admitted as sufficient, in any parallel 
instance^ on the field of classical literature. It must be 
a sickly affectatiouj or it must indicate a feebleness of 
the reasoning faculty, to speak in any other tone than 
this of the result of those critical explorations of which 
the Canonical Epistles have been the subject, in the 
course of the last fifty or sixty years. 

As to any argument with which, just now, I am con- 
cerned, I should be content if there were handed over 
to me, only so many as four or five of the Apostolic 
Epistles — or even fewer, as undoubtedly genuine. Allow 
me anywhere good anchor-hold in the roadstead of 
apostolicity, and it is enough. It is enough, not merely 
because these fewer authentic documents by themselves 
carry an inference from which we can never escape ; but 
because, as I shall show, a spurious writing, which is so 
like the genuine as hardly to be distinguished from it, 
will bear the weight of my present argument almost as 
well as if it were genuine. 

Then, after some such spurious or ambiguous docu- 
ment has yielded its available amount of evidence, in a 
direct manner, it serves a farther purpose in giving 
support indirectly to the genuine. The genuine shows 
the "Hall-mark;" but the spurious, or the doubtful, 
carries a mark that is less authentic ; and the com- 
parison of the two ^^ stampings " affords the ground of 
a new confidence, as to that which already we hold to 
be infallible. 



126 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

With our English straightforwardness about us, and 
our dislike of the practice of catching at straws for the 
purpose of keeping a desperate hypothesis above water, 
we take in hand a sample of German hypercritical cap- 
tiousness. — It runs in this way: — ^^ throughout our 
Epistle/' says the critic, ^^ we find several words, and 
some combinations of words, that are not Pauline: they 
indicate another mind, and another hand. The forger, 
it must be confessed, has very nearly hit" — ^what? 
Paul's style ! — ^but not quite : he has done his work 
cleverly ; but yet he has betrayed himself in not fewer 
than half-a-dozen places. 

This Pauline style is then — an HISTORIC REALITY — 
and as such I want nothing more ; it is distinct, and 
distinguishable, by its individual characteristics, which 
are of so marked a kind that, while they held out a 
temptation to the ancient forger, they are of so peculiar 
a sort that modern critics are sure of their scent 
whenever an imitation is under inquiry. It is just 
thus that a practised collector of ancient coins applies 
his tongue to a specious ^^ Cleopatra," or to a false 
^^ Ptolemy;" for he knows the taste of the genuine Egyp- 
tian mintage too well to be so easily imposed upon : — 
the colour of the rust is nothing. The Critic takes a 
bearing upon that which is genuine (implicitly, if not 
explicitly) for the purpose of discarding the spurious. 
But I take a position even wpon the spurious^ that, from 
that vantage-ground, I may learn to trust myself with 
more confidence to the genuine. As to any one in 
particular, of the twenty-one epistles of the Canon, the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 127 

question of its genuineness and authenticity need not be 
entered upon until some critic, competent to the task, 
comes forward, in seriousness, and with copiousness of 
proofs, to affirm that all of them are forgeries. This will 
not be attempted ; or if it be attempted, those who 
engage in such an enterprise must first make a clear 
field by erasing every remains of antiquity — profane and 
religious, anterior to the Norman conquest. 

Nor do we now touch any question as to the alleged 
Inspiration of these epistles, or of any other books 
of the Canon. We are often told that we timidly hold 
up this ^^ Inspiration " as a screen, lest the documents 
of our faith should come to be dealt with severely, in the 
mode that is proper to historic criticism. Only let this 
Historic Severity take its free course, and Disbelief will 
be driven from its last standing-place. It is rny perfect 
persuasion that, in the now actual position of the 
Christian argument, the doctrine of the Inspiration of 
the Canonical books is of more importance, in a logical 
sense, to Disbelief than it is to Belief. 

If every one of the Canonical books of the New 
Testament — every one of those in behalf of which 
Inspiration is alleged, had perished, and if nothing 
were now before us but the uninspired documents of 
Christianity — (those of the second century) I must still 
be a Christian, although I should often be at a loss as to 
the single items of my Creed. But now if the Canonical 
writings — Inspiration not considered, were dealt with in 
the historic mode, without prejudice or favor, Disbelief 
would wither like the grass of the tropics. 



CLASSIFICATION OF THE BOOKS OF THE NEW TESTA- 
MENT, IN RELATION TO THIS ARGUMENT. 



The historic and the supernatural (the miraculous) are 
connected in the books of the New Testament in the 
way of Cohesion, not of adhesion merely ; but then this 
cohesion takes effect in a very different manner in dif- 
ferent instances. These differences it is important to 
take account of; and it suggests a classification of the 
canonical documents accordingly. The Twenty-seven 
books take their places, when regarded in this particular 
aspect, under three heads ; and thus we have — 

I. Those, throughout the substance of which the his- 
toric base blends itself with the supernatural in the way 
of explicit and circumstantial narrative. These of course 
are the Four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles. 

II. Those books in which, once or oftener, some ex- 
plicit affirmation of the supernatural occurs ; but which 
contain no circumstantial narrative of miraculous events. 
Of this sort are Seven of the Epistles. 

III. Those in which we find no affirmation of this 
sort, and throughout which the supernatural makes no 
other appearance than that which is implicitly (though 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 129 

necessarily) conveyed in the primary article of the Chris- 
tian profession — namely, the Kesurrection of Christ. 
This necessary implication always understood, the writer 
affirms nothing that is miraculous. As many as Fourteen 
of the Epistles come under this category. 

In relation to the present argument the Apocalypse 
does not take a place in our arrangement. 

The facts then which, under this aspect, stand be- 
fore us, in outline, are these — That, out of the six and 
twenty constituents of the Canon, Fourteen are (as I 
here presume to call them) non-SUPERNATURAL, saving 
only that one constant element, expressed or implied in 
every Christian writing — the Resurrection of Christ. Of 
the Twelve remaining books. Seven Epistles, besides this 
universal implication, distinctly affirm the fact of a mi- 
raculous agency of toMch the writer professes to have 
personal cognizance. Five, or, if the Gospel of Luke 
and the Acts be reckoned as one — Four, books not 
merely allege this agency, but narrate instances of mi- 
racles; and so relate them that the natural and super- 
natural constitute a continuous tissue, not resolvable into 
two, except by violence. 

It is natural to place these three classes in the order 
here assigned to them ; but the logical order, ,or that in 
which they offer themselves most conveniently for a rigid 
scrutiny, which should end in a peremptory conclusion, 
is just the contrary. I therefore begin with the Four- 
teen Epistles which, liable to the condition already men- 
tioned, are here designated as the non-SUPERNATURAL. 
These are — The Epistles, to the Ephesians — to the 

K 



130 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Colossians — to the Philippians — the two to the Thes- 
salonians — the two to Timothy, the Epistles to Titus, 
and to Philemon, and the five Catholic Epistles of St. 
James, St. John, and St. Jude. 

This significant fact, that more than half of the au- 
thentic documents of a Religion boldly resting itself 
upon miraculous attestations, contain no explicit al- 
lusion to such events, claims our strict attention. At a 
glance this fact is susceptible of opposite interpretations ; 
but its true meaning will be seen in attending to the 
particular instances in which it appears. 

Manifestly, this tri-partition of the Canonical books 
is founded upon no intrinsic difference distinguishing 
them ; but is accidental merely. The difference has no 
other reality than that which attaches to these composi- 
tions in their bearing upon the argument just now in hand. 
It is to the same writer that we attribute five of the books 
of the second class, and nine of those belonging to the 
third ; and between those of the second and those of 
the third, there is discernible no difference of doctrine, 
or of tone, or of moral intention. Yet the one circum- 
stance which constitutes the reason of this present 
classification is itself explicable, and it consists perfectly 
with our assumption of the historic reality of the Chris- 
tian documents. That fourteen out of these six and 
twenty compositions, or that fourteen out of twenty- 
one epistles, should contain no affirmation concerning 
miracles, does not imply that miracles were not alleged 
by the teachers of Christianity ; — for they are alleged, 
boldly and clearly; but it quite excludes the inference 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 131 

that these teachers were men of heated minds whose 
element was the world of wonders, and who would 
always be labouring to propagate the same feeling, 
and to keep alive a species of excitement which is 
found to be peculiarly grateful to the mass of mankind. 
This fact, moreover, under the conditions which, as we 
shall see, attach to it, excludes the supposition that the 
preachers of the Gospel were accustomed to indulge 
themselves in the supernatural where it was safe to 
do so ; but that they cautiously abstained from any 
allusion to it where there might be a risk of provoking 
scrutiny and contradiction : the very contrary of this is 
that which presents itself. 

The writers of these Fourteen Epistles — this is con- 
spicuously evident — were neither striving to bolster up 
their own confidence, by incessant references to miracles ; 
nor endeavouring to sustain the constancy of their con- 
verts, by any such means. Their habit was — we do 
not infer this, but see it — to allege miracles whenever 
there was direct occasion so to do — and not otherwise ; 
and therefore, though they make this allegation in 
Seven Epistles, they do not make it in fourteen. When 
an Apostle writes to his intimates — his colleagues, 
and to those whose belief was a tranquil assurance, 
like his own — not a syllable of the supernatural meets the 
eye. When he defies his adversaries, and rebukes a set 
of faulty converts, he takes his stand upon miracles ; but 
even then a word of allusion to them is enough. 

The Fourteen Epistles that do not refer to the super- 
natural are attributed to four writers, namely, St. Paul, 

K 2 



132 ' THE REiSTOUATION OF BELIEF. 

St. John, St. Jude, and St. James. The temperament 
of these four writers is as diverse as can be imagined, 
and the style of each has no resemblance to that of the 
others. This dissimilarity of character being conspicuous 
(and it has often been insisted upon) the fact that 
the four are brought thus into company on the ground of 
their abstinence from the supernatural, in these epistles, 
carries the more meaning ; for it is evident that this 
abstinence did not draw its reason from the disposi- 
tions of an individual writer, but from an influence 
belonging to the Religion they professed, and which 
bore alike upon the four whenever the circumstances 
under which they wrote were similar, or similar in this 
particular respect. It has been customary to say — and 
we may always say it confidently — that God works no 
miracles without cause sufficient : and now it appears 
that these His servants make no mention of miracles — 
without cause sufficient. As in the Christian dispen- 
sation the supernatural was measured out by the neces- 
sity of the occasion, so are the allusions to it restricted 
within the limits of a rigid frugality. 



St. Jude. 

I TAKE in hand the Epistle of St. Jude as if it were 
the solitary extant contemporaneous document of that 
Christianity of which I have seen and heard so much, 
while traversing the Roman world iii the times of 
Trajan and the Antonines. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 153 

This Epistle is one of those which, through the 
caution of the ancient Church, took its place among 
the avTiXeyojueva — the ^^ controverted." Not that its 
antiquity was questioned, or its authenticity, in any such 
sense as is material to my present argument. The 
writer does not call himself an Apostle ; and the 
Church hesitated to admit the claims which had been 
advanced in his behalf in this respect. Besides, such 
was the religious feeling of the Christian body, and of 
the critics of the third century, that because Jude, in two 
places, quotes, as genuine, two books that were held to 
be spurious, this apparent error was judged to be in- 
compatible with his repute as an Inspired writer. 
Although an easy supposition, namely, that St. Jude 
cites, not those spurious writings, but some then extant 
remains, afterwards incorporated in the spurious books, 
might have obviated this objection, it so far had influence 
as to keep this Epistle under a cloud until some time in 
the fourth century. But with no ambiguities of this kind 
have I any thing to do at present. That the Epistle is 
a writing of the Apostolic, or very early times, has not 
been reasonably questioned. 

What this means is just this — that if those rules of 
historical criticism which prevail in this department — 
the department to which the instance rightfully belongs 
— are allowed to take eflfect, then the Epistle of St. Jude 
is a genuine document of the Christianity of the first 
century. Yet, even if if were nothing better than a 
good imitation of such documents, promulgated in the 
Apostolic age, it would serve my purpose as well. 



134 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

The energy, the simplicity, the gravity, and the 
moral tone proper to a genuine writing, are manifestly 
the characteristics of this. It has, too, a graphic force and 
a rotundity peculiar to it. Look to the Greek of this 
epistle, and you recognise the style of a writer who has 
a great command of tropical phraseology, and whose 
cumulation and condensation together indicate an intensity 
of feeling, which yet is governed in the manner that is 
usual with men in places of authority, who, while they 
write with power, are careful not to compromise their 
position by a lax diffuseness. While they show a stem 
countenance toward offenders, they preserve the calm 
aspect of paternal love towards the better sort. 

But the document in hand carries a meaning of a 
more definite kind. 

Whether or not we choose to regard an aflSrmation 
of the supernatural as a dead weight which must sink 
any writing in which it occurs, no such weight attaches 
to the Epistle in 'hand. Indirectly, as I have said, the 
reality of the primary miracle of the Christian profession 
is implied ; but the writer claims no power of working 
miracles for himself; nor does he allude to any occurrences 
of this class. There does not present itself, therefore, 
any hypothetical difiiculty which should bar the way of 
the inference I have in view. 

Thus far I suppose myself to know absolutely nothing 
concerning Christianity beyond that which I have 
gathered, by some industry, fi-om the writers — Christian 
and Heathen — of the period specified (p. 38.) What 
I have so learned stands far out of the reach of con- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 135 

troversy or contradiction. No scholarlike man would 
dream of attempting to bring the main facts into 
question. This various and voluminous evidence is, as 
I have said (pp. 56 and 109) a body of testimonies 
gathered from a surface geographically more extended 
than the Roman empire ; and when thus regarded^ the 
broadly expanded mass is seen to take a concentric 
bearing upon that which must have been the common 
source of the whole. If indeed nothing belonging to 
that central point had come down to us, we must have 
surmised concerning it as well as we could ; but if 
only a single fragment belonging to it reaches us, then, 
instead of vague surmises, we look to it in the war- 
rantable expectation of finding that this piece, small as 
it may be, will show a true congruity with the mass 
which remotely bears upon it. The mason's chiseling 
upon this key-stone will serve to identify it as belonging 
to the arch. 

Take notice then of my purpose, which is this : — in 
the com^se of an inductive scrutiny of the various 
materials in my hand, I am getting together, and 
bringing to their respective places, the well-squared 
stones of a firm historic structure, to which structure, 
as I shall afterward show, the supernatural so coheres 
that the two elements can never be sundered* or can never 
h^ fairly sundered. 

The community addressed in this Epistle was of some 
standing, for it had its stated observances, its ayairai^ and 
there had been time for it not merely to develop its 
own proper qualities, but to draw toward itself, as a new 



136 THE RESTORAIION OF BELIEF. 

and fervent religious body always does, men of cloaked 
purposes, who had found in it the means of gratifying 
their ambition, their cupidity, or their licentiousness. 
Yet this mischief, the constant attendant as it is of a 
remarkable religious movement, was a recent occurrence ; 
for the writer, a man in authority, upon gaining know- 
ledge of it had " hastened'^ "^ to throw himself in the way 
of its further spread — Traaav crirovdriv iroiovfi^voQ. 

These evil-purposed men had snatched at a doctrine 
which, when it is grossly apprehended by men of a 
sensual temper, seems to screen all vices. We descry in 
this instance the distinguishing feature of the Christian 
system (already known to us) that is to say, the free 
remission of sins, of which even the most profligate are 
invited to avail themselves. It is not against the 
immorality of the wide world that the wjiter inveighs ; 
but against that of those who had abused a Christian 
profession in this very manner. This abuse had be- 
come rank in a degree to which seasons of persecution 
supply an effective remedy. The season of general 
persecution had not, as it seems, yet commenced ; for 
if it had, these vultures would have flown. 

The Church of the martyr age we found in the attitude 
of a moral force, struggling to maintain a difficult 
position, closely beleaguered on every side by gross 
errors of belief, by abounding immoralities, and by viru- 
lent animosities. In the com'se of this struggle the 
Church was unconsciously coming into the possession 
of that fundamental principle of genuine morality — the 
sense of individual responsibility toward God. This 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 137 

germ of whatever is good it brought out into act for 
itself, and then passed it down for the benefit of man- 
kind in all time following. But we naturally look for 
the rudiments of so remarkable a revolution in the 
original documents of the religion which gave it to the 
world ; and now it comes under our eye in this Epistle. 
At a later time it was constancy in the endurance 
of sufferings for the truth's sake that had thrown 
the Christian upon his individual responsibility. In 
this earlier age it was constancy in resisting the 
insidious advances of false doctrine, and of specious 
immoralities that had availed to the same end ; and this 
constancy, as well in its later as in its earlier forms, 
had been animated by the same prospect of immortal 
blessedness. Thus are these springs of the moral life 
mingled in the closing injunctions of the Epistle. To- 
wards delinquents a compassionate discrimination was 
to be used — the individual demerits of each being consi- 
dered (verses 22, 23) ; while those who stood firm were 
reminded of their dependance every moment upon the 
help of God ; and this caution is conveyed in terms 
which, within the compass of five lines, concentrate 
what is most affecting in Theology and in Ethics. As 
to this majestic doxology, we should lose more in 
losing the truths it conveys than in consigning to the 
abyss of oblivion the entire body of classical philosophy. 
'' To Him who is able to guard you unfallen, and to 
make you stand before the glory (of his presence) un- 
blamable in joy — to the one God, our Saviour, by Jesus 
Christ our Lord, (be ascribed) glory and majesty, might 



138 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and authority, as well now as throughout all ages. 
Amen." 

Here then we find in this Epistle, exempt from every 
exception, reasonable, or unreasonable, A Centering- 
STONE of that structure which, in the age of the Anto- 
nines, had arched over the Roman world, from East to 
West, from North to South. 

St. James. 

To WHICH of the persons of this name, mentioned in 
the Gospels, this Epistle should be attributed, it is of no 
moment to inquire ; nor is it material to know anything 
more concerning it than that it is of very early date ; of 
which fact, besides the references to it by Clement, 
Hermas, and others — the place it holds in the ancient 
Syriac version is sufiicient evidence. 

Notwithstanding a single passage of ambiguous import 
(v. 14, 15) I do not hesitate to class this epistle along 
with the non-supernatural. The writer, among mis- 
cellaneous injunctions, gives one which by no means 
necessitates the supposition of v/hat should be called a 
miraculous agency: — miracles were incidental and ex-- 
traordinary (in their very import) but in this place a 
customary occurrence is referred to, and the reason of the 
course which the writer advises to be taken is drawn 
from a general truth, namely, the efficacy of prayer. 

The force and vivacity of this composition, besides the 
comparative purity of the Greek, give it a very marked 
character. It resembles, except in a few phrases, none 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 139 

of those with which, in the canon of the New Testament, 
it is associated. The writer gives ns a distinct idea of 
himself, as well as a portraiture of the persons with 
whom he had to do, which is specially graphic. The 
indications of historic reality stand out, one might say, 
with a harsh prominence on every paragraph of this 
Epistle. Nothing here has been smoothed down : there 
has been no revision of the first draught with a view to 
secure consistency, or to avoid giving offence. The 
writer must have known that his official position, and 
the weight of his personal character, could secure for 
him a hearing, how unacceptable soever might be the 
rebukes which it was his duty to administer. 

To no community could these remonstrances, and these 
reprehensions, and these pungent advices seem flattering. 
They might be submitted to, but they could not be wel- 
comed. The writer uses the tone of a man in authority 
— in office ; yet he does not labour to vindicate that 
authority; nor does he go about to sustain the pre- 
tensions of a sacerdotal class ; he falls in with no pre- 
judices ; he flatters no overweenings of national or 
sectarian self-love. The epistle bears upon its surface 
the straightforward purpose of a firmly constituted and 
fearless mind, opposing itself at once to open abuses 
and to specious pretexts. Nothing that is sinister — 
nothing deeper than the resolute intention of one who is 
jealous for truth and virtue, can anywhere be discerned 
among the sententious clauses of this composition. 

We are free to take it for what it seems : to take it in 
any other sense we are not free. We are no more at 



140 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

liberty so to do than we sliould be to put an ill construc- 
tion upon the words or conduct of a neighbour, against 
whom we have not a shadow of unfavourable evidence. 
This writer is not a man of meditative turn : his modes 
of thinking are fixed ; his views, so far as appears from 
the epistle, are limited ; his habits and feeling shew the 
practical, not the abstract tendency. In temper he is 
firm ; or even severe ; but yet he is discriminative ; and, 
toward the well-behaved he is indulgent and loving. 
He resents subterfuges, he is indignant at wi'ong. 
He does not work his way, by reasoning, toward a con- 
clusion, but seizes it with vivacity, by a moral instinct. 
His logic is of this kind — ^^ Talk as you may — profess 
what you please, I know of only one sort of piety that 
can be acceptable before God, our Father ; which shews 
itself in visiting the fatherless and widows in their 
affliction, and in keeping itself unspotted from the (pol- 
lutions of the) world. — Whatever your theology may be, 
the wisdom which I acknowledge to be genuine and 
heavenly, is pure, peacefully disposed, gentle, easy to be 
persuaded, abounding in works of mercy, and in fruits of 
goodness : — it is impartial, and abhorrent of dis- 
guises." 

Such is the writer; but the epistle gives a brightly 
historic reflexion of the manners, tempers, usages, of the 
community, or class of persons that is addressed. 

But now shall not a discreet Christian apologist hesi- 
tate before he lifts the curtain ? He will do so if what 
he is in search of, in antiquity, is a factitious image, or a 
fabulous social condition : not if he be in quest of hard 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 141 

historic realities : not if it be his ambition to drive off 
from the Christian precincts the shadows, the myths, 
the quaint imintelligible hypotheses of German origin, in 
the mists of which English Disbelief is just now finding 
a momentary refuge. 

Even if the writer of this Epistle had not prefixed to 
it the conventional phrase which designates his nation, 
" the twelve tribes of the Dispersion," we should have 
had no difficulty in recognising our company. It is 
certain that, on this occasion, we have entered the an- 
cient Synagogue. The noisy congregation around us 
has become professedly Christian ; but in behaviour, 
and in moral costume, they are Jews, more than 
Christians. They are persons who have not undergone 
that melting down of the soul which took place in the 
instance of educated polytheists who, when they " turned 
from dumb idols to serve the living God," and when 
they awoke to the hope of immortality, passed under 
the transformations of a new existence. As to these 
synagogue converts, they had given up one religious 
persuasion, and they had taken up another. They had 
yielded the one point of controversial difference between 
the Synagogue and the Church ; but they had retained 
entire, their factious spirit, and their wrangling habit of 
discourse. They were expert in the twists and sophist- 
ries of casuistical evasion : they were ever ready to cry 
^^ Corban," when appealed to on the ground of mercy 
and piety. Between the obliquities of their Jewish 
training, and the simplicity of the Christian system, 
a perpetual conflict was going on. That characteristic 



142 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

of the community of which we get a glimpse in this 
graphic epistle, is — moral restlessness — a want of equi- 
librium — a want of repose, an utter want of consistency. 
One hears the clatter and the jar of a discordant as- 
semblage of men who, as yet, have adjusted nothing in 
their own principles or motives. In a word — and it is a 
word full of historic meaning, we have stepped into the 
Synagogue ! 

These Jewish converts were skilled in those perverse 
reasonings, by means of which men are wont to throw 
the blame of their many failures upon God (i. 13). 
They were glib in speech, (i. 19) lagging in conduct ; 
prompt to dictate, (iv. 1) slow to learn. Ready to cringe 
before the rich, (ii. 2) backward in administering to the 
needs of the poor, (ii. 15.) Such was the wild license 
of the Jewish tongue, that the writer exhausts all 
figures that can be applicable to the subject, in labouring 
to set forth its unbridled excesses : a tongue, the incen- 
diary intensity of which declared its rise in the nether 
furnace ; a tongue, in one horn-, taking its part in a 
liturgy, in the next pouring forth curses! These apt 
scholars of the Devil (iii. 15) slanderers, like their 
teacher, (iv. 2) are dealt with in a way which nothing 
could sustain but the intrepidity of the most assured 
virtue and piety. We shall presently find the very 
same men (the likenesses are not to be mistaken) treated 
by another chief of the new religion, in his own style ; 
but with the same fearlessness. 

Critics have differed as to the country of the writer. 
It is of little moment to settle this point ; — of none just 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 143 

now. The people of the synagogue are much the same 
folk, wherever we find them. They were so, not merely 
from the prevalence and decisiveness of their national 
dispositions and habits; but because the individuals 
composing these congregations were migratory, carrying 
with them, of course, their peculiarities. Even now, in 
this synagogue in which we have taken our stand, there 
are some who have lately arrived from the ends of 
the earth ; and there are also some who, at the moment 
when the sun goes down, will be busy at home, strapping 
their packages, and preparing to depart, at dusk, or at 
dawn, having already whispered to themselves the words 
reported by this writer — " To-day, or to-morrow, we 
we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, 
and buy and sell and get gain." 

The precise date, too, of this epistle is contro- 
verted; yet, apart from reasons of a critical kind, and 
which favour a very early date, that peculiar moral 
condition of indeterminate conflict, between Jewish 
tempers, and Christian principles, which this epistle 
brings so vividly before us, must, in its nature, have be- 
longed only to a transition period; and we know, in 
fact, that, while Judaism speedily collapsed upon itself, 
Christianity soon ceased to wear this party coloured garb; 
and everywhere showed its own mind, as the very con- 
trary of Judaism. This epistle would not comport with 
any state of things of later date than the Jewish war. 

There is one point of accordance between the epistle 
of St. Jude and that of St. James which we should not fail 
to notice. I have said, (p. 107) that a remarkable 



144 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

uniformity of tone characterizes those passages in the 
writings of the martyr age in which the personal attri- 
butes of the Saviour Christ are alluded to; consequently 
this prime feature of the Christianity of the second and 
third centuries should show itself in every document bear- 
ing date in the apostolic times. And so it does in these 
two instances, and the fact is the more observable be- 
cause, in neither of them, is the theological element 
distinctly brought forward. The one writer speaks with 
a calm solemnity of Him whom some, by their immora- 
lities, had impiously denied — ^^ our only Lord God and 
Saviour Jesus Christ;" and the faithful are exhorted to 
" look for" the " mercy" of this Saviour, ^^ unto eternal 
life." The other writer, in the same tone, and with the 
same allusive brevity, speaks of the Christian profession, 
as the faith of the ^^ Lord Jesus Christ — (the Lord) of 
Glory." And he denounces those who, while perse- 
cuting the followers of this Saviour, were accustomed to 
^^ blaspheme that worthy name." 

These two epistles, then, the historic reality of which 
stands out of the reach of legitimate scepticism, and 
which possess, in themselves, a peculiarly well-defined 
character, constitute — apart — and together — a mass, in- 
destructible in itself, and equal to any stress which — to 
revert to my masonic allusion, I may have occasion 
hereafter to throw upon it. 

But suppose that, on the question of the genuineness 
and authenticity of these epistles, our critical evidence 
falls short, by a little, of irresistible demonstration. This 
imagined faultiness of proof (which in fact cannot be 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 145 

alleged) may indeed touch the question of the place that 
should be assigned to them in the Canon of Inspired 
Scriptm'e; but it scarcely affects at all^ if at all, my 
present argument. 

I take this Epistle of St. James, marked as it is with 
the inimitable characteristics of genuineness — as much 
so as any literary remains of antiquity that might be 
placed by the side of it. As to its antiquity^ all shadow 
of doubt is removed, not merely by the quotations of it 
by the early Fathers, as a then well known writing; 
but by its presence in the Syriac version, in which the 
epistle of St. Jude does not appear. These very early 
Translators found it already possessed of an accredited 
repute, as an Apostolic work ; and as such it had been 
ordinarily read in the churches using this language. 

But let us imagine that these ancient Translators, and 
that the Eastern Churches generally, had misjudged 
the case : in fact, that they had been imposed upon — 
the epistle, although spurious, bearing so much the 
semblance of an apostolic work that they did not detect 
the fraud. The forger — the imitator — the compiler, by 
whatever epithet we should designate him, so well 
understood the manner of the apostolic teaching, and he 
knew so well what would be looked for by Christian 
readers in any composition purporting to come from an 
apostolic man, that he could expect nothing but instan- 
taneous detection if he admitted into his copy so much 
as one line of ambiguous quality, as to its bearing 
upon morals. This imagined imitator of the apostolic 
style, after looking about him for samples, in order to 



146 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

choose the one which should seem the most charac- 
teristic, and the least likely to awaken suspicion, makes 
this sort of selection: — He writes an epistle, in the 
assumed name of James, for which he hopes to obtain 
currency among Jewish converts throughout the world, 
which epistle breathes an uncompromising moral inten- 
sity, and abounds in sharp rebukes of that sanctimo- 
niousness which was the prominent characteristic of the 
Jewish people ! 

What does this mean but that the well-known apos- 
tolic style — the style which an imitator would think it 
the safest to attempt, was that of men who, with the 
courage of God's own prophets, were wont to risk every- 
thing in behalf of truth and virtue ? I do not see then 
that we should gain much on the side of Disbelief by 
suggesting doubts as to the genuineness of the Epistles 
of the Canon : better let them pass at once for genuine 
and authentic. Apostolic Christianity, if looked at 
through its own crystal, shows the clear brightness of 
Heaven : — looked at in the copper speculum of spurious 
writings, it carries a resplendence, not sensibly dimmed. 



St. John.^ 

The First Epistle of St. John stands among the 
ojuLoXoyovimeva of the ancient Church, the genuineness 
and authenticity of which are copiously attested. The 
second and the third were questioned; but these are of no 
moment in relation to my argument, any further than 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 147 

this — that, if imitations, the absence in them of any 
allusion to miracles shows that this omission was 
customary in the Christian writings of the time. 

There is not a word or phrase occurring in the first 
Epistle which could suggest the idea that Christianity 
had made its way in the world by the aid of miraculous 
attestations — the one foundation miracle always sup- 
posed. Yet at several points, throughout it, an allusion 
to miracles would have seemed fit and natural ; espe- 
cially where an appeal is made to that assurance of being 
in possession of truth which the writer affirms to be the 
privilege of Christians. The appeal is to an interior 
vitality, not to external demonstrations (iii. 14, 19, iv. 
16, V. 10). The appeal is to a moral test, not to the 
supernatural (iv. 20). The witnessing on earth (v. 8) 
omits the witnessing by ^^ signs and wonders." The 
ripened Christianity which this writer spreads out before 
us, had no intrinsic alliance with any such attestations ; 
which belonged to the outworks of the New Eeligion. 

The writer last cited was seen to be in conflict, right 
and left, with the first inburst of rancid Judaism ; but at 
the time when the epistle now before us was given to 
the Christian community, this source of trouble was just 
passing off to the distance : the disturbers had discovered 
their mistake in thinking to connect themselves with 
the rising body ; and they had retired. ^^ They went 
out from us, but they were not of us ; for if they had 
been of us, they would have remained with us." (ii. 19.) 
The Christian body had at length become homogeneous ; 
the leaven having worked itself into the mass. Yet 

L 2 



148 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

human nature is always the same ; and we find that 
these Teachers, however far the system they adminis- 
tered might have shifted its position, and how widely 
soever they may themselves have differed in temper- 
ament, yet tread the same strait path whenever this same 
human nature, with its frailties, awakens their fears for 
the honour of the Gospel. 

This identity of feeling, and even of language, is the 
more observable, because, in this instance, it forms the 
one link connecting two writers who, individually, might 
be taken as extreme samples of the most opposite ten- 
dencies of the human mind. The one, with knit brow, 
expanded nostril, firm lip, and outstretched hand — like 
the master of a ship in a storm, is intent upon the be- 
haviour of his people, and observant of the shifting 
tempest : — the other, with even front, and open eye, is 
gazing upon the cloudless vault of heaven, as if uncon- 
scious of earth, and always ready to leave it. And 
yet this contemplatist whose own converse is with the 
unseen of the Christian system, so understands this 
system, and is so alive to its bearing upon the conduct 
of its adherents, as to know that, if the sordid and fac- 
titious religionist slides off from the path of morality, on 
the one side, the sincere idealist — the man of meditation, 
is not unlikely to slide off from it, on the other. 

Noticeable it is that, while the main drift of the one 
epistle is practical, and the spirit and tendency of the 
other is theological, yet, in the course of it, the writer 
lets go, and again takes up his admonitory strain as 
often as seven times within the compass of so brief a 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 149 

treatise. He does this as if at the prompting of an 
undefined moral instinct^ which; ever and again, brings 
him down from Heaven to earth, alarmed lest he should 
have failed in any point of his duty, as a leader of the 
people. St. James, with a ruthless hand rends the 
mask from the hypocrite. St. John, with a loving 
solemnity warns the mystically disposed against those 
illusions — those oblivions of the obligations of life, of 
which, so easily, such men are the victims. The one 
Teacher thus rebukes the perversity of the dogmatist— 
"What good is it, my brethren, for a man to say he hath 
faith, and have not works ? Can faith {such a faith) 
save him?" The other Teacher addresses himself to the 
sincere theopathist — lost in the meditation of ineffable 
perfections ; but yet the two come into conjunction, as 
we say af the heavenly bodies, on the very same meri- 
dian of Christian charity : — the one says, " if a brother 
or a sister be naked and destitute of daily food, and one 
of you say unto them — depart in peace, be ye warmed 
and filled ; notwithstanding ye give them not those 
things which are needful to the body ; what doth it 
profit?" The other says the same thing, in his own 
manner: " Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his 
brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels from him, 
how dwelleth the love of God in him ?" 

Now at this point I decline to accept a customary tri- 
bute, rendered to the " sublime purity of the Christian 
Ethics" — ^which "all admit." This vapid homage will 
not satisfy the occasion. I require, from a reasonable 
antagonist, an acknowledgment having more of historic 



150 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

distinctness about it. It is very true, and there can be 
little merit in not denying it, that a high moral tone 
pervades the books of the New Testament. But beyond 
this, if we possess any of that instinctive faculty, which 
enables a reader to look into the bosom of a writer, 
through the glass of what he has written, then we must 
admit that, if any two of these writers whose individual 
structure of mind was the most dissimilar, are placed 
side by side, there is seen, working at the depth of the 
heart of each, alike, a moral intensity — quick, sensitive, 
and always consistent in its utterance ; for even if we are 
not always able to discern the coherence of their theolo- 
gical reasonings — ^we always admit the harmony of their 
ethical conclusions. 

This fact I shall turn to account in the course of nly 
future argument ; for it can never be made to consist 
with any of these suppositions under cover of which 
disbelief takes shelter. 



St. Paul. 

Of the fourteen Epistles attributed (and rightly) to 
St. Paul, as many as Nine take their place along with 
those already spoken of, as containing no allusion to 
miraculous occmTcnces, or to miraculous gifts. Of these 
Nine, four are addressed to individuals who were the 
Writer's intimates and colleagues. Five are congrega- 
tional addresses, sent to those four Societies with the 
religious condition of which the writer was, in the main, 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 151 

well content. With these there was no serious contro- 
versy in hand; nor any personal contest, making it 
needful for him to sustain his apostolic authority. The 
faith of these, his personal friends, and of these attached 
and obedient converts, was, like his own — it was a " full 
assurance of faith" — sl faith to which miracles could add 
no steadfastness. So it was that when no motive sug- 
gested a reference to supernatural attestations, none ap- 
pear. 

But as to six of the nine, now in view, they sparkle, 
as one might say, with historic crystallizations; and every 
paragraph reflects something of the objects that were then 
surrounding the writer. St. John knew just so much of 
that world through which his pilgrimage heavenward 
lay, as might be forced upon his notice by urgent motives 
of responsibility toward the church. St. Paul knew the 
world around him, as those know it who are gifted with 
perceptions the most intensely vivid. The persons, the 
transactions, the modes of feeling in the midst of which 
he was moving, he was as much alive to, as was the 
most observant of his contemporaries. He has penned 
no graphic descriptions of oriental splendours, or of the 
Roman greatness, but as often as he needs a figui'e in 
illustration of his subject, he shows that he could have 
done well what he has not attempted. 

A sheer pedantry, I should think it, to profess hesita- 
tion in accepting these nine Epistles as genuine. Unless 
it were to give proof of critical quixotism, no one would 
have gone about to show reason for any such doubts. 
But, just, now, it is enough if only some of them are 



152 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

genuine, and the remainder are good imitations. The 
reasonings — if they deserve to be so designated — of those 
of the German critics who have laboured to bring the 
three pastoral epistles into doubt, are of a sort that might 
well be adduced in illustration of a copious and not un- 
important branch of intellectual philosophy — I mean, 
nationality in logic. Germans reason after a fashion 
which a firmly constituted and cultured English mind 
resents as an insult to common sense. Upon the merest 
film of possibility the attenuated intellectuality of 
Germany soars away through thin air. Between the 
not-to-be-translated mysteries of its abysses, and the 
infinite divisibilities of its heights, the mind of England 
finds no terra firma. A writer who undertakes the task 
of defending the canon of Holy Scriptures as inspired^ 
must needs meet and refute these refinements, even the 
last of them ; but no such obligation rests upon one who 
carries forward an argument such as that which I have 
now in hand. 

The pastoral epistles connect themselves by some inci- 
dental allusions, with the epistles of St. James, and of 
St. Jude, for we find in them a portraiture which must 
at once be recognised. 

A particular class of men against whom one apostolic 
writer inveighs — to whom another gives battle, and to 
whom another transiently alludes, the writer of the three 
pastoral epistles so depicts as that they may easily be 
identified. They were every where found hovering about 
the infant society; and, being by temper and habit 
noisy and obtrusive, it would have been an easy error in 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 153 

an observant polytheist of that time, to have spoken of 
them as true samples of the new religion, and to have 
drawn an inference accordingly, to its disadvantage. 
We may just fancy the sarcastic author of the piece — 
HEPI THS nEPErPINOY TEAEYTHS— the Vol- 
taire of his age, if he had lived a century earlier, to have 
encountered some of these men, and to have given us his 
pithy description of them. We may suppose him to say 
that he had met them in the streets of Alexandria, and 
at Ephesus, and at Antioch, and at Corinth, as well as 
at Kome ; and he had found them too -in Crete, which 
seemed to be their head quarters. They are voluble, 
contentious, acrimonious, virulent in their talk, obtruding 
everywhere the mystical dogmas of their religion ; and 
cloaking always their real purposes. Insidious are they, 
and fertile in expedients for drawing the unwary into 
their trap ; and all this is to fill their bags with money. 
I have found one of these huckster preachers, with his 
box of baubles slung over his shoulder, working his way 
into the court yard of a great house, where he has con- 
trived to draw the women about him — mistress and 
maids, whom he entertains, with marvellous stories, and 
with more marvellous dogmas; while, at frequent pauses, 
he puffs the contents of his package, where you may find 
the aromatics of Arabia — the oils of Syria — the silks, 
the silver rings and chains, the gems (not worth a button) 
of India, the tear-bottles, the signets, the scarfs, the 
tiaras of Persia : — and all as worthless as this new phi- 
losophy itself — this "marvellous wisdom of the Chris- 
tians." 



154 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Even Lucian, if he had written in this manner, must 
have admitted that those "Palestinian priests and scribes" 
who were, as he does say, the reputed authors of this 
" philosophy," had done their utmost to denounce these 
false adherents, and to expel them from the Society. " A 
Christian bishop" — writes one of these Teachers, " must 
not merely be a man of blameless life ; but of such 
energy also that he may be able to convince and to 
put to silence those disorderly and noisy persons — 
Jews chiefly, who, with sordid intentions, teach what 
they ought not.- These are they who subvert whole 
families, and while they profess to know God, in works 
deny him : — abominable are they and disobedient, and 
unto every good work reprobate." The very same per- 
sons are they which one finds " creeping into houses, and 
leading captive silly women, laden with sins, led away 
with divers lusts." This plain dealing, and more to the 
same purpose, did not long fail to take efiect. The men — 
as we have just seen — went off — declared themselves open 
enemies of the new religion, and acted as such thence- 
forward ; and when they had taken this turn, we find 
them using the influence they had already acquired in 
every city with "ladies of rank" to move persecution 
against the Christian teachers. St. Luke courteously 
calls these ladies " devout and honourable women ;" yet 
it is not certain that St. Paul, in a letter of pointed 
advices addressed to his friend, might not be thinking 
even of these — as the same " silly women," who, at the 
instigation of these Jews, moved the magistrates to make 
an ill use of their power, driving the Apostles from city 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 155 

to city, or leaving them without redress in the hands of 
the rabble. 

It would have been of no avail, probably, to appeal 
to the candour of one like Lucian, or to his sense of 
justice, spreading before him these three pastoral epistles, 
as evidence that he had misapprehended the new religion. 
This anticynic was too thoroughly cynical in soul and 
temper, to have listened to any such challenge, or to 
have placed himself within range of any generous emo- 
tions. But we of this time profess ourselves to be just, 
candid, and discriminating, and therefore may be chal- 
lenged in any case to give a verdict according to the 
evidence, even although it be in contravention of our 
previous opinions and inward wishes. 

What then are the conclusions which, looking to 
these three epistles — and to nothing else — are warrantable 
and inevitable ? — looking to these three epistles, and not 
looMng away from them^ to the right hand or to the 
left.— 

Although they now stand in a collection of writings 
that are stitched in the same cover, this juxta-position 
is incidental only. They have indeed reached us on the 
same float, with other writings, but they obtained a 
lodgement upon it on a showing of their own merits, 
singly. Individually they have passed the ordeal of the 
severest criticism. The probability that they are not 
genuine is infinitely small. Even if one of the three 
were abjudged, it would still keep its place in argument, 
as a good imitation of the apostolic manner. 

The pretext (illogical as it would be to m^ge it) that 



166 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

these pieces are damaged — historically, by an admixture 
of the supernatm'al, does not in this case find any sort of 
lodgement; for here there is no such admixture — the be- 
lief of Christ's resurrection being always allowed for. 

But although it would be illogical to advance such 
an exception as this — for the reality of the Christian 
miracles is the very question in debate — yet a valid 
reason would present itself for regarding these, or any 
other writings, suspiciously, if they pictured a fabulous 
condition of the social system; — or if it appeared that 
the writer, surrounded always by the golden haze of his 
own fictitious emotions, could never see things around 
him as they are. Manifestly it is not so here : — human 
nature is plainly spoken of, such as it is, always ; and 
it is cared for accordingly : — cautions, provisions, injunc- 
tions, varied and repeated, show that the writer was at 
once cool in his judgment, and practical in his views, as 
well as immoveably firm in principle. 

These epistles are so admonitory in their drift and 
tone that, as to what might be the virtues of the Chris- 
tian people of that time, we gather no information from 
this source. From Pliny's letter to Trajan we should 
learn more that is favourable to the purity of the Chris- 
tian body, than we do from Paul's letters to Timothy 
and Titus. 

We do not need the evidence of these three letters to 
establish the fact of the existence of Christian societies at 
the time alleged. But the purpose they do serve is to 
show that Christianity, as interpreted by the most zealous 
and intelligent of its first Teachers, held its place in the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 157 

world as an earnest Eemonstrant Force, opposed, not 
merely to religious errors, but to evasive pretexts, to 
illusions, to hypocrises, and to immoralities — Jewish or 
Gentile. Especially was it a protest against the miin- 
telligible jargon — the interminable wranglings, the so- 
phistry and the impiety which its own energy, simplicity 
and grandeur had woke up, on every side of it, as its 
assailants. 

If the mind of one of these writers seems at any time 
unhinged, while he is making his protest against these 
assailiants, there is an ingredient mingling itself with 
these vivid passages, which has a deep meaning. It is 
the characteristic of minds that are habitually tranquil 
and conversant with what is great and pure, when sum- 
moned by a sense of duty to join issue, hand to hand, 
with the lawless and disorderly of this world, to revert, 
as if with a rebound of the soul, to the loftiest themes ; 
— as if desiring to escape from a scene of confusion, to 
the sanctuary of its happy and wonted meditation. Now 
it is remarkable that the most sublime and beautifully- 
worded of those doxologies, and of those condensed 
enunciations of eternal truths which illumine the pages of 
the New Testament, are found embedded in the very 
midst of warm remonstrant passages. In fact, within 
the narrow limits of these three epistles — the drift of 
which is mainly remonstrant, there occur as many as 
fourteen of these resplendent parentheses. 

The very same indication of spontaneous reaction is 
discoverable in the epistles of St. James, and of St. 
Jude — both of them reprobative; — among these are some 



158 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

which stand unmatched in grandeur of idea, and in ma- 
jestic simplicity of expression. 



The Epistle to Philemon has often — perhaps often 
enough, been appealed to by those who have undertaken 
the Christian argument. Nothing can be more legiti- 
mate than such an appeal, if the question be — What 
was the writer ? was he such a one as Paul must have 
become, after a thirty year's apprenticeship to illusion 
and unreality ? To affirm this, or even to harbour such 
a thought at all, is not so much a wrong done to the in- 
dividual, as an outrage upon human nature. 

This letter breathes the tranquil rectitude of a mind 
that is in perfect equipoise ; and that is used to take its 
rest among the gentlest and the purest emotions. It 
does not touch the supernatural ; but it is in a genuine 
sense itself natural in every phrase of it. An accord 
of truth vibrates in every well-attuned mind at the hearing 
of every verse. Even if the writer of this letter had not 
reminded his friend that he was — " Paul the agedj'' we 
might surely have inferred this fact from that peculiarity 
of it which is its charm ; for it shows the mellowed gen- 
tleness of a spirit that, at the end of years of labour 
and of suffering, has survived all its vehemence, but 
none of its sensibility. 

In what way then does this Epistle avail us for pur- 
poses of argument ? It peremptorily avails for excluding 
any of those suppositions touching the character of the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 159 

writer which must of necessity be resorted to when, the 
merely historical part of Christianity being granted as 
real, the supernatural, thereto cohering, is attempted to 
be set off from it as spurious. 



The two Epistles to the Christians of Thessalonica 
are of early date, according to the almost unanimous ver- 
dict of modern critics. A phrase occurring in the second 
paragraph of the first Epistle — Iv SwajuLH, had at this 
time acquired a conventional sense, and probably it car- 
cried an allusion to those miraculous attestations of the 
Gospel which had attended its first promulgation in that 
region. Otherwise, or beyond the insertion of this single 
word, these two epistles do not contain a reference, direct 
or indirect, to any such events, as if then occurring, or 
as having lately occurred, under the eye of the persons 
addressed. This absence of the supernatural is full of 
significance in this particular case. 

Inconsiderately, in relation to their own argument, 
those writers who have lately assailed Christianity have 
noised the instance of Paul's apparent error in regard to 
the near approach of the consummation of all things. It 
has been said, in a tone of exultation — " You say Paul 
was an inspired man ; and yet we here find him pro- 
fessing a belief, in regard to which, assuredly, he was 
utterly mistaken." 

It would be enough to reply that the Second of these 
Epistles, written for the very pm'pose of correcting the 



160 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

mistake to which the first had given rise, conclusively 
proves that the writer, notwithstanding his use of the 
personal pronouns, did not himself entertain any such 
anticipation. A proper inference also from this same 
instance has been drawn by Paley, in proof (if proof 
were needed) of the genuineness of the Epistle. 

But a sufficient reply, on my part^ would be this — 
That the objection bears wholly upon the question of 
Inspiration, with which, at present, I have nothing to 
do. I am looking into these remains of apostolic Chris- 
tianity, in a purely historical light, and not at all as the 
materials of Theology. 

Thus then let us handle this matter with all freedom, 
and see what use we can make of it, on either side. You 
take the language of the writer in its apparent meaning, 
and therefore assume that, when he says " We which 
are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord" — 
and again, when he affims that " We shall be caught up 
to meet the Lord in the air" — his mind was filled with 
the glowing idea of a near exchange, for himself and 
his converts, of pain, want, and humiliation, for eternal 
blessedness and glory. 

Let this then be our hypothesis. The writer was 
himself in a condition so helpless that, while preach- 
ing the Gospel, he was compelled to labour night and 
day for his daily bread, and at the same time he was 
undergoing grievous ill treatment, at the risk of life. 
Those to whom he wrote, being mostly of humble rank, 
were also enduring cruel persecution at the hands of 
their Gentile neighbours, on account of their religion 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 161 

Such being the present position of the Teacher, and of 
the people, he holds before them the belief that, midway 
in the tranquil hours of some day, not very distant — 
earth itself should tremble at the blast of the archangel, 
and should echo the notes of the trump of God, and the 
shout of celestial myriads : — the Lord himself, with the 
hosts that do his pleasure, drawing near to earth, and 
rescuing thence his faithful followers, carrying them off 
to immortal joys ! 

It was no wonder that siiriple people who thus under- 
stood (or misunderstood) their Teacher, should be much 
" shaken in mind," by such a prospect ; or that, some of 
them, breaking away from their ordinary occupations, 
as unnecessary, and unbecoming their high expectations, 
should wander up and down — ^^ working not at all" — 
but busying themselves in everything rather than their 
proper employments. This was quite according to the 
course of things, and some recent instances of a similar 
kind might easily be mentioned. 

Yet it is certain as to the propagator of this per- 
turbing belief, that he had not himself in any degree lost 
the balance of his own mind. A tone of calm affection, 
and of a subdued feeling — the consequence of long con- 
tinued suffering— pervades both epistles, this first espe- 
cially, which is distinguished also by the earnestness of 
its admonitions, as to conduct and temper, in purity, 
rectitude, sobriety, gentleness, and avoidance of every 
guise or semblance of evil. 

If in any case we may trust to the universal principles 
of human nature, we may confidently affirm that a mind 
•" M 



162 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

which, while it is filled with anticipations of the most 
animating sort, is yet recoUective of all proprieties, and 
careful on those points of duty which are not of an 
exciting kind, must be a strong mind, not a weak one — 
a well regulated mind, not one that is habitually de- 
ranged by some conscious moral obliquity. 

According to the hypothesis now before us, Paul was 
looking, every day, for a triumphant apotheosis of him- 
self and his associates, amid the exulting shouts of the 
heavenly hosts; — and yet he shows himself to be as 
regardful of the obligations of this present life as if a dull 
century of its trials and labours had been guaranteed 
to him. No ingenuity will avail to make this idea of 
the man consist with any of those suppositions upon 
which we are thrown if, while we accept the mere facts 
of Christianity (which it is impossible to deny) we 
attempt to rid ourselves of the supernatural, therewith 
connected ; for those suppositions imply that the Apostles 
were men who strangely mingled in their mental struc- 
ture, imbecility, extravagance, and a blunted sense of 
the obligations of truth. 

But now I relinquish the advantage put into my hand 
by an inconsiderate opponent, and assume the contrary 
supposition, which I take to be manifestly the true one — 
namely, that, in writing the first of these epistles St. 
Paul did not entertain the belief which, at a glance, his 
language may seem to express. 

Then I ask, how was it that he did not entertain this 
belief? Ideas of this order were, as we see, actually 
present to his mind, and they furnished the grounds on 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 163 

which he took comfort for himself, and imparted it to 
others. Now with minds imbued with religious con- 
ceptions the tendency has always shown itself to bring 
down the supernatural, if possible, upon the present hour. 
Even highly cultured minds have been seen to surrender 
themselves to this powerful impulse: — ^^ to-morrow, next 
month — next year, or such a year, named, which we 
may live to see — these glories shall brighten the earth 
on which we tread." Thus, from age to age, have sin- 
cere but unstable souls been wont to beguile themselves 
on the field of prophetical interpretation. Not so St. 
Paul (on the supposition now before us). Yet why not? 
If we say, because his mind was pre-eminently vigorous, 
and was always in the soundest condition ; if this be the 
reply, I am content ; and shall not fail to draw an in- 
ference accordingly. If the reply be — The actual course 
of this world's affairs, involving a slow development of 
evil principles, had been conveyed to him swpernaturally j 
that is to say, by the teaching of Him who alone looks 
on through the lapse of ages ; then also I am content ; — 
for such an answer (the only true and admissible answer) 
embraces every thing on the side of Belief. It is beyond 
my province to advert particularly to that prediction of 
the second epistle by means of which the Apostle cor- 
rects the mistake into which his friends had fallen : 
nevertheless this prediction, by its boldness, its gravity, 
and the unlikelihood of its fulfilment, bespeaks its own 
reality. It has been said that this prediction, coupled 
with another occurring in the Epistle to Timothy, are 
only notable instances of sagacity, forecasting the ten- 

jvi 2 



164 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

dencies of hum^n affairs. Wonderfal indeed would be 
such an instance of long-sightedness ! but I should be 
apt to think that a mind which could thus penetrate 
the dark unknown of centuries to come, must have seen 
that a religion j)retend{ng to be supernatural, and which 
yet was not so in fact, would soon exhaust its meagre 
resources, and disappear. Is this then our supposition, 
that an intellect of the highest order lent itself to an 
enterprise which it saw to be baseless and desperate ? 



The absence of all allusion to miraculous attestations 
in the Epistle to the Ephesians, is a fact deserving of 
particular attention. 

The captious exceptions of De Wette have at length 
been overruled, and the genuineness of this Epistle can 
scarcely be said to stand liable to a shade of reasonable 
doubt. Following the arbitrary division of the Received 
Text, we have before us 155 clauses, or separable mem- 
bers of a continuous flow of thought. Of these verses 
66 convey the writer's fervent feelings, as in presence of 
the loftiest themes of Christian Theology : 89 verses are 
occupied, either immediately with pointed ethical injunc- 
tions, or with those reasons and motives that take a 
bearing upon the ordinary behaviour of Christ;iansj but 
in not so much as one clause, or phrase, does the writer 
turn aside to mention miracles, or miraculous endow- 
ments. And yet there are two places in this epistle in 
which such an allusion would have seemed quite natural. 
The first of these is (iv. 11,) where the functions which 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 165 

were then in exercise in the Church are enumerated, 
among which the power of working miracles does not 
find a place ; although, in a parallel passage of another 
epistle (1 Cor. xii. 10 — 28) these powers are expressly 
named. The other place is that occurring toward the 
close (vi. 10, et seq.) in which the writer sets forth, in 
vivid figurative language, the arduous position which 
those occupy who, in making profession of the Gospel, 
oppose themselves to the crafty and to the open violence, 
not only of men around them, but of invisible adversa- 
ries — more to be dreaded. Against these powers — seen 
and xmseen, the Christian soldier is exhorted to hold his 
ground, armed (the fanatic would have said — ^with Hea- 
ven's own thunder-bolt, and with those "fiery darts" 
which would bring omnipotence to bear upon the artillery 
of hell) armed, says the Apostle, with Truth, Kectitude, 
Peace, Faith, the hope of Salvation, and the Word of 
God ; for these are the defences and the weapons which 
a genuine wisdom approves. 

Quite of a piece with the spirit of this closing advice 
are the preceding admonitions, in the compass of which 
each of the principal points of homely morality is 
touched upon, in the very plainest form of words, and 
in a tone of earnest solemnity. But I hear you say, sar- 
castically — "It appears then that the Christian folk of 
those apostolic times needed much looking to, as to their 
morals." I reply — It does so appear; but then, if they 
needed it, they had it ; and this fact is enough in re- 
lation to my present purpose. 

What we find is this — That the first Teachers of 



166 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Christ's religion, though they might forget, for a time, 
their own wonder-working endowments, never wrote a 
letter in which they forgot the main import of their re- 
ligion ; which was to uproot the usurpation of Satan in 
this world ; — and this usurpation was to be resisted by- 
means that are purely spiritual and moral. 

This absence of the supernatural, in the instance before 
us, has however yet another meaning. 

The 66 verses already referred to, make up a cluster 
of parentheses, piled one upon another by the writer's ful- 
ness of feeling. He has almost forgotten his galling chain 
(vi. 20) ; he has forgotten the Roman soldier at his side, 
and the prison : — he has forgotten earth and its trials, as 
well as its pomps. As if with a seraph's wing he has 
reached the upper heavens, and thence he measures, at 
a glance, the scheme of human salvation, stretching out 
far into the eternity past ; and far into a bright eter- 
nity to come. On either hand of this shining pathway 
through the infinite, he sees a bright array of ^^ princi- 
palities and powers," observant of this mystery of re- 
demption — long veiled, and now revealed. 

While thus musing upon objects so vast, was the 
writer's state of mind such as we must approve, or not ? 
Were his feelings — real or illusory ? If they were of the 
latter class, and if there be any coherence in human 
nature, meditations so lofty, indulged by one who at the 
same time believed himself to stand near to the Super- 
natural — as we find he did, would infallibly have gone off 
upon this high ground; — here he would have exhibited 
himself as in correspondence with heaven by means of 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 167 

those supernatural endowments which were at his com- 
mand. 

How is it in fact that he descends to resume his ter- 
restrial standing-place? He has just sealed his lofty- 
meditations with a doxology ; and then a returning con- 
sciousness of the sombre things of earth takes this turn 
— " I therefore a prisoner of the Lord beseech you that 
ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called 
— with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, 
forbearing one another in love." 

Adhering then to our document the case stands thus — 
On the one hand bright meditations did not lead the 
writer of this epistle toward the Supernatural ; — they did 
not, BECAUSE HE WAS NO ENTHUSIAST: On the Other 
hand, gloomy meditations did not drive him toward the 
Supernatural; — they did not, BECAUSE HE WAS no 
Fanatic. He kept close to the course of practical wis- 
dom and virtue — ^because, in fact, he was in the highest 
sense, wise, virtuous, and sound-minded. 



Toward the Christian people at Philippi, St. Paul's 
feelings were those of warm affection, gratitude, and ap- 
proval. The personal allusions in this Epistle, addressed 
to this Society, are of the most peculiar kind ; and these, 
along with the mass of external testimonies, place it far 
out of the range of captious exceptions. Once again 
then referring to my protest against violence^ I affirm that 
— violence not admitted — this morsel of Greek, now 
under my eye — this six pages of antiquity, is as much 



168 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

a Reality as is any other remains of past time which 
this present time conserves, and trusts to. If I may not 
say so much as this, show me, in accordance with the 
authentic rules of historical criticism, why not. 

In this composition the writer, who was then reaching 
the term of his labours — the religion which he had taught 
having by this time wrought the whole of its proper 
effect upon his mind — freely opens his heart to our in- 
spection ; and in doing so he incidentally conveys the 
elements of Christianity itself, and exhibits its bearing 
upon human nature. 

Now I wish that we could read this one document 
of the Apostolic times as if not an atom beside had 
come down to us : let us take it as if it were our only 
means of forming an opinion concerning that religion of 
which we possess copious information as it had come to 
hold a place in the world, in the age of the Antonines. 

Whatever that breadth of facts required us to imagine, 
as belonging to the centre fact — the rise of this scheme, 
we find to be condensed within the limits of this one 
document. There is first the mysterious dignity of the 
Person to whom, on every page of the later Christian 
writings, a reference occurs, in terms of grave reverence, 
and devout affection. LuciAN, and other writers of his 
age and class assure us that the zeal and assiduity of the 
Christians of his time in serving or rescuing one another 
was incredible. — aiii)\avov Si tl to ra^og eTndeiKVvvTai, 

eireiSav tl tolovtov yivr^Tai^ Sr)fi6(Tiov ol XpKTTiavoi 

GVfKliOpav TTOLOVji^voL TO TTjOay/xtt, iravTa Ik'ivovv^ e^apTracrai 
TTupwiLievoL avTov^ To us this need not seem strange, 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 169 

for the motives which prompted such labours of love 
had a foundation in the Christian theology of surpass- 
ing intensity. The writer of this epistle says to his 
friends at Phillipi — " Do not, every one of you, he re- 
gardful of his personal interests, but let each be mindful 
of the welfare of others : — ^in a word, let that disposition 
be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who being in 
the form of God thought it no wrong to be equal to God ; 
and yet emptied himself (of this dignity) and took the 
form of a servant;" — and this to accomplish our salva- 
tion. 

It is testified abundantly, by their enemies, concerning 
the Christians of the martyr age, that they cheerfully 
submitted to spoliations, and were even prodigal of life. 
Celsus mocks them on this very ground; he says, 
though making much of the body in their doctrine of the 
resurrection, they were ready — TraX^v S' avro piirTuv uq 
KoXaauQy wc cltljiov — when challenged to renounce their 
hope of immortality. This is as it should be, if they had 
truly imbibed the spirit of their religion as at first taught 
them; for St. Paul had said — ^^ Yea doubtless I reckon 
all things as a loss, for the excellency of the knowledge 
of Christ Jesus my Lord ; for whom I have suffered 
the loss of all things, if by any means I might attain to 
the resurrection of the dead." 

Pliny assures us that he found the Christians of his 
province to be a harmless folk, binding themselves to 
do whatever is right, and to abstain from whatever is 
wrong. So it should be, for, from the first, they had 
been thus instructed. " As to anything further my 



170 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

brethren (which I might wish to say, this is enough). 
Whatever things (in profession or behaviour) are true, 
whatever things are seemly, whatever things are just, 
whatever things are pure, whatever things are loving, 
whatever things are well-reputed, if there be any thing 
of manly virtue, if anything praiseworthy, make such 
things your study." 

And thus, in the main, did Christians behave them- 
selves in those times concerning which our information is 
ample — their enemies being their witnesses ; and thus — 
as we now see, had they been taught from the very first. 
There is here before us an arch — all in one style, one 
jamb of which has its resting place in the age of Trajan, 
the other in the time of Nero. 

In this Epistle we find a lofty theology — a bright 
immortality, a pure and a finished morality, a loving 
fervour, and a sharply struck individuality; but there 
are no miracles. Nevertheless there seemed room for 
one, inasmuch as the writer had looked for ^^ sorrow upon 
sorrow" in the dangerous illness of his attendant fiiend 
— Epaphroditus — a calamity he had not thought himself 
able to avert by supernatural means; for these were at his 
command only for a single and clearly-defined purpose — 
the attestation of his message. Granted for this one pur- 
pose, no allusion to them is found in epistles addressed 
to those who needed no such assurances. 



The Epistle to the Christians of Collosse presents 
the same elements, and sustains the same inferences: 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 171 

there is the same theology, as to the Person (i. 15), 
the same hope (i. 12, iii. 4) : the same morality (iii. 5, 
et seq.) : and throughout it, the same fervour and indivi- 
duality. It presents however this further characteristic 
of the writer's temper and principles — ^namely, a decisive 
protest against that specious pietism which so easily 
enslaves feeble minds by its abstracted mysticism, and 
its ascetic practices, and its superstitious observances. 
Yet the writer had no contention with this Society ; and 
the epistle contains no allusion to miracles. 



GENERAL CONCLUSION AS TO THE NON-SUPERNATURAL 

EPISTLES. 

It appears then that these apostolic writers, though 
they much more often omit the supernatural than advert 
to it, yet are never found to omit the preceptive element 
in their addresses to their converts. They well knew 
that it is not by miracles that men are to be trained to 
virtue. Now, in this, I see just that which one observes 
in the instance of a careful and industrous husbandman. 
He has been looking upon his parched fields; but in a 
moment Heaven's flash lights up the landscape : Hea- 
ven's voice peals round the skies ; Heaven's copious rain 
comes down, a life-giving torrent. This seasonable help 
the husbandman could not command ; but when it has 
come, it is his part to follow it up: he does not talk of 
the fertilizing thunder shower, but he goes to work upon 
his field with a new animation. So it is with the apos- 
tolic writers: they say little of miracles; but they say 
much of behaviour : they plant, they sow, they root up 
every weed : and it is God that giveth the increase. 

Besides, these New Testament writers had read the 
Old Testament history ; and they had gathered from it a 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 173 

lesson of wisdom by which they ruled their own conduct, 
as teachers of religion. They held that the things which 
had befallen the Israelitish people had been recorded "for 
our learning," and from this history they drew the in- 
ference that, although miracles serve to bring the teacher 
into his position of authority, as God's minister, the 
work on account of which he has been so installed has to 
be carried forward irrespectively of miracles. The Apos- 
tles were well conversant with those historical odes in 
which the obduracy of the people is the recurrent theme. 
They had listened to the verse, " Marvellous things did 
He in the sight of our forefathers, in the land of Egypt : 
even in the field of Zoan ;" and they had taken up the 
response — " Yet for all this they sinned more against 
him ; and provoked the most High in the wilderness" — 
" they believed not his wondrous works" — " They forgat 
God their Saviour, who had done so great things in 
Egypt : wondrous things in the land of Ham ; and fearful 
things by the Eed Sea»" 

That these instructive passages in the history of their 
nation were present to the minds of the Christian teachers 
we have their own repeated assurance (1 Cor. x.. Acts, 
vii. 51, xiii., xxviii. 25; and Hebrews iii. 7, 8, 9) ; and 
that they had put a true and wise construction upon these 
instances we have this palpable evidence, that, while their 
writings breathe throughout an intense fervour, directed 
toward the one object of promoting and securing the per- 
sonal and social virtue of the people committed to their 
care, they do not in a single instance throw the stress of 



174 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

any ethical argument upon the supernatural attestations 
of their message. Throughout the epistles morality is 
made to rest upon the solid basis of universal and per- 
manent religious considerations. 

I have said that the question of Christianity is strictly 
determinable Thus far j it clearly is so. 

When the massive literary remains of the period al- 
ready referred to — Christian — non-Christian, and anti- 
Christian — are taken as evidence of the existence, wide- 
extension, and general quality of the new religion, in- 
structed men will not be found to be materially at 
variance as to the palpable facts that are thus established. 
These facts are out of question among educated persons ; 
but they lead us to look back toward that moment when 
this religion was making its earliest assaults upon the 
religions around it, and upon the immoralities of the 
times. The result of this quest for early materials is the 
production of some ten or twelve compositions, or more, 
purporting to be addresses or official circulars issued by 
the first teachers and preachers of the Gospel. These 
letters having come down fi-om the time of their alleged 
production, amply verified in the modes admitted to be 
valid in such cases, are submitted to the strictest scrutiny 
which modem criticism, in its mood of utmost severity, 
has been able to effect. This process is continued through 
a period of sixty years ; not because the case is in itself 
ambiguous ; but mainly for this reason, that each rising 
man, aspiring to practise in this court, and ambitious 
to distinguish himself by taking his share in the conduct 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 175 

of a suit that draws the eyes of the world, has hunted 
the ground anew for pretexts on which to rest his repu- 
tation. 

I am keeping my eye upon those fourteen epistles to 
which reference has been made in the preceding pages ; 
and which I have named the Non-Supernatural ; and 
am now about to call your attention to the Seven, in 
which an aflSrmation of, or allusion to, miracles, somewhere 
appears. It may be well, however, in stepping across 
from the one class of writings to the other, to bring under 
your eye the proportion, as to massj which the one bears 
to the other, in a more exact manner than in stating it, 
as I have done, roundly, as two to one. 

The Canonical Epistles, which are twenty-one, are 
broken up, in the Eeceived Text, into 2767 verses. It 
matters not whether this subdivision has been well or ill 
effected. Of this number a large proportion, which it is 
not easy to define, has reference to the circumstances or 
history of the writers, or of the persons addressed ; and 
is of a purely historic quality. This mass constitutes, in 
fact, a sort of suhstratum^ firm in its adhesion, part to 
part, and available for any of those purposes which, in 
an argument on Evidence, it is usual to accomplish by 
such aid. 

Another portion of the mass, the quantity of which it 
is not important to ascertain, is occupied with theological 
disquisition, or argument, or the ennunciation of principles 
that are purely religious. About one thousand of the 
verses are either directly preceptive, bearing specially 
and pointedly upon the virtues and vices ; or they are 



176 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

absti'actedly preceptive, and properly ethical. Such are 
the injunctions — " Be ye holy (saith God) for I am 
holy" — " Without holiness no man shall see the Lord ;" 
and many of the same sort. 

I now set off one chapter entire, which is directive^ 
relating to the exercise of the "gift of tongues;" — this 
passage, not included, then, of the whole number of 
canonical verses, namely 2767, not more than Sixteen, 
or, if we include some contextual portions, let us say 
Twenty verses, contain affirmations or allusions imply- 
ing miraculous events, as known to the writer, and for the 
reality of which he must be held to pledge his reputation. 
Presented therefore in the one mode, the proportion be- 
tween the two masses is as two to one. Presented in the 
other form, which is the most exact, it is as one to 138. 

Perhaps this state of the facts may not hitherto have 
occurred to you : but do not misunderstand my intention 
in thus presenting it. Do not imagine that I am clearing 
the ground, as far as I can, in preparation for a retreat ; 
or am intending to creep out of the miraculous through a 
loophole of this sort. 

In entertaining any such supposition you would do me 
a great wrong. What I am preparing the way for is an 
affirmation of the Miraculous in the boldest, most 
ample, and uncompromising manner ; but meantime this 
fact of the vast disproportion of the two masses — for 
which perhaps you were not prepared, as attaching to 
the epistolary part of the Canon, I hold to be fraught 
with argumentative meaning of a very conclusive kind; for 
it will consist with no other hypothesis than this, That, 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 177 

conversant as they affirm themselves to have been, mth 
supernatural events, these writers — not one or two of 
them, but all — were right-minded men, and were exempt, 
in a most unusual degree, from the ordinary religious 
tendency to run into, to run after, or to drive foi-ward, 
those excitements which the Supernatural supplies. 

I might now, and as thus more accm-ately com- 
puted, bring forward the body of historic materials, 
using more than ninety-nine parts of it out of a hmidred, 
as standing clear of every pretext of exception, on the 
ground of the admixture of the miraculous. This ninety- 
nine ^er cent forms a body of vastly greater bulk than is 
required for bearing up, and for giving consistency to, 
the facts of the widely-based Christianity of the age of 
the Antonines. This central mass satisfies the condi- 
tions that are demanded by the facts belonging to the 
later period. All the phenomena of that period are 
embraced and satisfied ; everything is explicable. The 
religion, seen at its rise, is found to be a system of mo- 
tives, principles, and precepts which we find to have 
been brought into act in the martyr age, throughout the 
extent of the Roman world. 

The documents of the later time are so copious and 
so heterogeneous that an exceptive criticism may do its 
worst without affecting any argument dependent upon it. 
The documents of the inchoative period, though small in 
bulk, have come forth from a " furnace of earth, heated 
seven times," and they stand as approved. The later 
dated and voluminous mass takes its bearing — groining 
down upon the centre column, and finding there its true 

N 



178 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

support, whether considered as so much masonry, or as 
so much architecture ; it is all solid, and it is all in 
keeping. 

But now to aflSrm that this one per cent, of the Super- 
natural vitiates the mass in the midst of which it occurs, 
is just to beg the question upon which we are joining 
issue. 

You say Miracles never have occured; if so, those 
who affirm them must not be listened to. 

But satisfy me in any way you please, either of evi- 
dence, or of abstract reasoning, that they have not, and 
then we are agreed. As to the evidence, it is immove- 
able; and as to your abstract reasoning, it is in my view, 
a transparent sophism. 



THE SEVEN APOSTOLIC EPISTLES 
WHICH AFFIRM OR ALLUDE TO MIRACLES. 

These are five of St. Paul's Epistles — namely, to the 
EoMANSj the Corinthians, first and second; to the 
Galatians, and to the Hebrews — here assumed to be 
his, and the two Epistles of St. Peter. 

These compositions, when compared with the four- 
teen, are they of inferior pretensions, as to genuineness 
and authenticity? One of them excepted, it is not at 
all so. Do they lock-in less firmly with the historic 
mass with which they stand connected? This is far 
from being the fact. Fom* of the Pauline Epistles so 
cohere with the nine of the Non- Supernatural class that no 
critic would attempt to sever them. Read the two epis- 
tles to the Corinthians, and the epistle to the Churches 
of Galatia ; read them in the Greek, and do your utmost, 
as you go on, to persuade yom'self that they are any- 
thing else than what they profess to be. Even the 
Tubingen Critics have here confessed themselves foiled. 
No scholar who is not crazed, or what is worse, half 
crazed, and therefore allowed to go in and out among 
the sane, will risk himself upon the sceptical side, in 

N 2 



180 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

tliese instances. Tlie same may be affirmed of the 
Epistle to the Eomans. Upon this four, with the Epistle 
to the Philippians (also allowed to be unassailable by 
criticism^ or hypercritlcism) the entire weight of the 
Christian argument might very safely be thrown. 



But I now take in hand that one of the Seven upon 
which a divided verdict has been pronounced by honest 
and competent critics. I mean the Second Epistle of 
St. Peter. 

For the purposes of the present argument, I regard 
it as if, on good grounds, supposed to be not what 
it professes itself; or to be, in some sense not easily 
defined, a spurious work. That it had become known, 
and that it was publicly read throughout the East at an 
early period, is a fact sufficiently attested by the mode 
in which it is cited, or referred to, by (Clement of 
Alexandria ?) by Eusebius, and by Jerome. That, not- 
withstanding its intrinsic excellence, it stood so long 
waiting for admission into the Canon, is one proof, among 
many, of the cautious manner in which the ancient 
Church exercised its discriminative function, as guardian 
of the Sacred Text. 

The intrinsic excellence of this suspected epistle is 
such that its exclusion from the Canon, if this could now 
be effected, would inflict pain upon every devout reader 
of Holy Scripture : its characteristics are apostolic gra- 
vity, unction, and purity of aim. In a word, it bears 
upon its surface that inimitable air of calm majesty, and 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 181 

simplicity, which is peculiarly Bihlicalj and which so 
broadly distinguishes the books of the Canon from all 
other compositions — especially from those of the age next 
ensuing. 

The supposition of the spuriousness of this Epistle 
may best be made to consist with its apostolic tone, by 
means of some such hypothesis as this — That some 
genuine fragments of apostolic teaching had been put 
together by whoever framed the epistle, as one; and 
that the interference of this fabricator went no further 
than merely to insert, between the fragmentary portions, 
some few connective phrases. The first verse therefore 
(on this supposition) may be untrue only so far as this — 
that it was not " Simon Peter" who issued the whole, in 
its present form. 

Any such supposition as this manifestly touches the 
authority of the epistle, in a theological sense ; but in 
relation to an argument purely historical, it has little or 
no significance. I will now take it up on the lowest 
supposition (which however is very far from coinciding 
with my personal belief) namely — That, from the first 
verse to the last, this epistle is a forgery, or an attempted 
imitation of the well-known apostolic style. 

If so, then the imitation is so good, that, notwith- 
standing many critical difiiculties, and the paucity, or 
inconclusiveness of the external evidence, it did obtain 
currency at a very early time : it did at a later time, 
make its way into the Canon. In modem times its air 
of truth and reality have secured for it the suffrages of 
an evenly balanced array of critics. 

This fabrication then (if such it be) has been ably 



182 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

executed. Those who have decided against it, whether 
in ancient times or in our own, have admitted that " it 
contains nothing unworthy of an Apostle:" — although 
differing in style from the first epistle, it differs not at 
all in its tone and tendency. 

Now let us put the facts together. How good soever 
the intentions of a writer may be, or mistaken his prin- 
ciples of action, it is not possible to attribute any high 
degree of moral sensitiveness to a man who sits down 
coolly to produce a forgery. There must be a flaw, or 
something worse, in the understanding of the maker of 
a lie, as well as a falseness in his conscience, be his aim 
never so good. A mind that is at once infirm and vi- 
tiated, betrays itself somewhere. An involuntary betrayal 
of itself may be set down as the natural consequence of 
an inward treason : or it will be so, unless a restraining 
force of extraordinary intensity is present to prevent it. 

In this instance what was this restraining force, the 
operation of which has been sufficient — as we see, to 
exclude fi:om this fabrication every taint of the morbid 
condition of the writer's own mind ? It can have been 
nothing else but a very vivid sense of the extreme deli- 
cacy and difficulty of his enterprise, in its bearing upon 
morals. One phrase wrong, in this sense — a single 
clause savouring of laxity, would be enough to condemn 
the whole, in the view of the Christian community; for 
all would exclaim — " it was not thus that an Apostle of 
Jesus Christ ever spoke or wrote." 

I will put this supposition in a more definite form, as 
thus : — let us imagine that the real, though unconfessed 
object of the writer was, under favour of an apostolic 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 183 

name, to give currency to the belief of tlie literal melting 
down of the material universe — "the heavens and the 
earth," in the " day of the Lord." This startling aver- 
ment, which is but slenderly, if at all — corroborated by 
other Scriptural declarations, the writer reiterates, in 
phrases a little varied, three times within the compass of 
the same paragraph. He does this as if he were very 
intent upon his object, and wishing to secure a due 
regard to it. Here then was precisely the hinging place 
of the whole piece ; and at this point especial care was 
requisite. 

Now the writer, well aware as he was, of the feeling 
that pervaded the Christian community, and knowing 
what it was that would be looked for in a writing pur- 
porting to be apostolic— skilfully sets his dogma, as to 
the fiery doom of the creation, in the most authentic 
style, inserting between his two afiirmations of it, this 
pointed ethical caution — " K then all these things 
(which now we look upon) are to be melted down (sud- 
denly, and perhaps soon) what sort of persons ought you 
to show yourselves in pureness of behaviour, and in 

piety?" "But we Christians look for new heavens, 

and a new earth — ^which is to be the habitation of righ- 
teousness. Wherefore beloved, inasmuch as ye are look- 
ing out for such things as these, be careful that (the Lord) 
when he comes, may find you in peace, unspotted, and 
blameless." 

It was thus then, and in no other manner, that, in 
those early times, a spurious writing could be put toge- 
ther with any chance of its passing among the Churches 



184 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

as an apostolic work. If now this Epistle be genuine, 
then it is available, with its majestic simplicity, and its 
fervour, in proof of the temper and feeling of ^^ Simon 
Peter, the servant and apostle of Jesus Christ." But if 
it be spurious, then it is available, in a sense even more 
expressive^ and more extensive, as indicative of the tem- 
per, the feeling, and the moral sensitiveness of the com- 
munity, the suffrages and favour of which it courted. 

If I thought of, and cared for, nothing but the argu- 
mentative availdbleness of this document, I should be 
equally willing to accept it, as genuine, or as spurious. 

Whether genuine or spurious, it sustains alike a far- 
ther inference. If it be genuine, then, in the near prospect 
of martyrdom, by crucifixion — Kai lUrpoQ Se IttX ^Vwjxriq 
Kara Ks^aXrig (jravpovrat — which he mentions under the 
calm euphemy of a " putting off this tabernacle," the 
writer very pointedly affirms his latest confident profes- 
sion of the Gospel, as true ; and he pledges himself on 
the ground of his personal knowledge of its truth, in 
recollection of that hour, when, from the midst of the 
dazzling shekinah, the voice of the Most High pro- 
claimed Jesus, the Son of God ! 

But if this epistle be factitious, and if the writer was, 
as we see, perfectly aware of the conditions under which 
he might hope to gain credit for his work, then it is 
manifest that it had been the known usage of the Apos- 
tles to utter such professions of their personal con- 
cernment with the supernatural events of Christ's life. 
Or state the case thus ; — the supposition being that this 
second epistle is a fabrication. — 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 185 

— The very significant fact has already obtruded itself 
upon our notice^ that, taking the apostolic epistles en 
masse J allusions to the supernatural are very few; not 
being one per cent, as to quantity ; and that these writers , 
more often than not^ addressed the churches without 
making a single averment of this sort, direct or indirect. 
It is plain therefore that it would have been quite a safe 
course for the forger of an apostolic letter to avoid every 
thing of this kind : on the whole, it would have been the 
safer course of the two ; and an astute scribe (he was no 
blunderer who got up this epistle) would be very likely 
to keep himself on this safer side. But now, unless it 
had been the known practice of the Apostles, and of St. 
Peter especially, at timesj if not often, to affirm their 
personal implication with the supernatural, unless there 
had been among the churches a consciousness of this 
fact, it would have been to incur a risk of the most 
extreme sort to insert, in a letter bearing the name of 
St. Peter, a formal statement, such as occurs in the 
first chapter. 

If the Epistle be genuine, then this aged Teacher of 
the Gospel, in the last days of his life, affirms 
Christianity to be a supernatm^al dispensation. 
If it be spiu'ious, it indicates the fact that such affir- 
mations were customary with apostolic men. 



The First Epistle general of Peter. In this in- 
stance to advance, as if there might be reasonable ground 
for it, the supposition of spuriousness, would be a great 



186 THE KESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

impertinence. The apostolic antiquity of this Epistle is 
a fact out of question — I mean among those whose read- 
ings in German have not denuded them of their English 
common-sense. Yet even here, though very unwilling 
to seem to concede anything to pedantry and affectation 
— I should be willing, as to its bearing upon my ar- 
gumentj to take this Epistle as (though not genuine) 
so like to the genuine, as to secure for itself universal 
acceptance as such. 

The calm majesty, the fervour, the bright hopefulness, 
and the intense moral import of the Epistle carry it home 
to every ingenuous mind as an embodiment of whatever 
is the most affecting in theology, and the most effective 
and salutary in ethics. With those — if there are any, 
who have no consciousness of these qualities in the 
writing before us, I should not court controversy. 
In any such instance nature must have dealt in a very 
parsimonious manner with the mind and heart, and 
sophistry must have greatly overdone her part. 

But how does this Epistle connect itself with the 
Supernatural ? What does it say of Miracles ? Not one 
word of allusion does it contain to occurrences of this 
order, as then attendant upon the ministry of the 
Apostles. It is addressed to the dispersion (Christians, 
figuratively, or Jewish converts, literally) sojourning in 
the provinces of the Lesser Asia. St. Paul in his course 
through these same countries had established the reality 
of his mission by ^^ mighty signs and wonders," wrought 
in every city on his track. In these provinces — or some 
of them, Christianity had prevailed over heathenism to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 187 

an extent — so says Pliny — which must leave a very dif- 
cult problem in the hands of those who, in their theory 
of the spread of the Gospel, deprive its preachers of the 
aid of the Supernatural : it had spread and triumphed 
either without the help of miracles ; or with that help. 
Take which supposition seems to you to involve the 
lesser difficulty. I must profess to think that in this case 
it is nothing but Miracles that can save us from the In- 
credible. 

No such occurrences are however alluded to in the 
instance before us. I draw an inference full of meaning 
from this fact ; coupled as it is with another, which is of 
still deeper meaning. 

The writer, in addressing an admonition to the Pres- 
byters of the Christian societies takes to himself the style 
which conveys the lowest of his claims so to address 
them : he is a presbyter, as they are ; and also " a witness 
of the sufferings of Christ." To these sufferings he makes 
a very distinct allusion as often as seven times in the 
course of the Epistle. In each instance these allusions 
are woven into an ethical context, in such a manner as 
to be inseparable from it. Take the instance which 
occurs in the second chapter. The main purport of 
this chapter, as indeed of the entire Epistle, is hortatory, 
and bears upon the conduct and temper of Christians, 
when suffering for their profession. Whatever in it is 
theological rather than ethical, comes in as an illustration, 
or as a subsidiary reason : these adjuncts therefore so 
cohere to the mass as to make an attempted separation of 
them impracticable. 



188 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Christians are fortified under the endurance of wrongful 
inflictions, by several considerations — mainly by a re- 
ference to the example of Christ, who so suffered, wrong- 
fully indeed, for in him was there no sin, no guile, and 
who, in silent patience, yielded himself to violence, while 
" his own self he bare our sins in his own body on the 
tree." 

It is thus that the Writer, and in other places in the 
same incidental manner, affirms and attests the death of 
Christ, of which he was a witness. This is not all ; for 
as if to preclude subterfuge, he follows the released 
Spirit in its descent into Hades, and affirms what had 
been the purport of this entrance of the ^^ Shepherd and 
Bishop of Souls" among the Dead. A little further on, 
and when resuming the subject of the patient endurance 
of wrongful inflictions, he affirms that Christ, when " put 
to death in the flesh," entered — incorporeal — among the 
disembodied; visiting the region where they are de- 
tained ; and there making a loud and authoritative pro- 
clamation ; (on the part of God.) 

With the theology of this passage I have nothing to 
do ; nor am careful to forefend inferences of any sort. I 
read the verses, in their open and historic sense. A 
knowledge of this fact, remote as it was from all cog- 
nizance of man, without supernatural aid, must have 
been given to St. Peter, either by Christ himself, orally, 
after his resurrection, or must have been conveyed to him 
at a later time, in some mode which he regarded as 
supernatural; and therefore authentic. If I were to 
describe to you the things which would be found in a 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 189 

particular latitude and longitudcj at the lowest depth 
of the Atlantic, in doing so I must make profession of 
ha"vdng at my command some means of information that 
are unknoTvni alike to common experience, and to science. 
St. Peter affirms, therefore, in this case, that which in- 
volves and implies the supernatural, even more necessa- 
rily than is done in some narratives of visible miracles. 

But he affirms also the resurrection of Christ, in varied 
phrases, five times in this Epistle. These affii'mations 
are all of them adjunctive to his proper subject, and in- 
separable from the context. They include not only the 
fact of the resurrection, but that also of Christ's assump- 
tion to the throne of celestial dominion, (iii. 22.) We 
have here in hand an instance of the Cohesion of the 
supernatural and the historic which is of a peculiar kind. 

In any composition if three, four, or five subjects, 
of different classes, are brought together, that one among 
them must be regarded as the one uppermost in the mind 
of the writer, in illustration of which the other subjects 
— two, three, or four, are introduced. That one is the 
leading subject; the others the adjunctive and subdi- 
viding. 

According to this plain rule, the drift of this Epistle 
is ethical. The main intention of the writer, and his 
ruling impulse, was so to fortify the minds of the Christian 
people under his care, as to secure the purity, rectitude, 
and religious consistency of their conduct. In going 
about to make good this — his main purpose, he brings 
in those principal facts on which the Christian profession 
rested, and in behoof of which Christians were liable to 



190 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

suffer. These facts stand in series j commencing with a 
merely historic fact — namely, the crucifixion, and the 
death of Christ — going on to those that were wholly 
remote from human cognizance, and coming to a close in 
the visible, yet supernatural fact, of Christ's ascent from 
earth to heaven. 

Now this instance of indissoluble Cohesion may be 
dealt with, and it has often been so dealt with, in a 
style of extenuation or apology, as thus. "Can we 
imagine, or ought we to suppose that a writer who is so 
careful to enforce moral principles, and who so well 
understands them, should himself, through life, be the 
propagator of what he must always have known to be a 
falsehood ? " Reasonably we can imagine no such thing ; 
but just now I should state the case in other terms 
as thus — 

I bring this document into Court. In doing so I pro- 
test against any pleadings that take for gTanted the very 
question which is now to be argued, and upon which the 
plaintiff and defendant have joined issue. That question 
involves the reality of a series of facts, including those 
that are miraculous. 

As to the genuineness of this particular document, it 
has already passed under revision, in the proper Court; 
and it has been duly countersigned 'there, as authentic. 
It stands open to no exceptions that could be available 
for the plaintiff, except this one — that it bears upon the 
verdict in a sense unfavourable to himself. But this ex- 
ception, of course, stands for nothing. 

I read my document from beginning to end, and then 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 191 

ask — ^^ Excluding the plaintiff's nugatory objection, 
which is grounded upon his apprehension of an adverse 
verdict, would this Epistle suggest any other idea than 
this, that the writer's own mind was tranquil and well- 
ordered ; and that his intention in writing it was of that 
sort which is becoming to a wise and virtuous man ; es- 
pecially to one who is in a place of authority ?" 

The answer is manifest. This Epistle, if read apart 
from any reference to the point now in debate, and if 
judged of purely on the ground of its intrinsic merits^ 
carries home to our understandings and best feelings an 
irresistible impression of the goodness, wisdom, and sim- 
plicity of the writer. Search the entire compass of ethical 
writings, ancient and modern, we should not find even 
one that cames more decisively upon it the characteristics 
of sincerity, and truthfolness. 

Why should itj or why should the writer be otherwise 
thought of? For no imaginable reason, only this, that, 
if we allow him his due — then the plaintiff* is very likely 
to be non-suited. 



The genuineness of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and 
the integrity of the Text, are admitted by the highest 
critical authorities. Its antiquity is vouched for, at once 
by the usual external evidence, and by several allusions 
contained in it to the services of the Jewish Temple ; 
and which indicate its publication before the destruction 
of Jerusalem. As to the authorship of this Epistle, 



192 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Origen's judgment may well be assented to — oti, to, jllIv 
vorjjuara rov uttocttoXov eariv, ri Sf ff^paaig kol ri avvOemq 
airofJivrjiuLOvevaavTog rivog ra aTrocrroXtKa — and this al- 
lowed, it will take its place chronologically, in the last 
year, or two years, of the Apostle's life. 

This composition is a theological treatise in its sub- 
stance ; an epistle only in its form. It is just so far 
personal in its allusions as to give the whole a more dis- 
tinctly historic character than it would derive from its 
argumentative portions : The writer speaks once and 
again of himself, and of his colleague Timothy ; and he 
administers rebukes, freely and mildly, to those whom 
he addresses, as if personally acquainted with their reli- 
gious condition, and their attainments. 

These attainments fell short, it seems, of what might 
have been expected, opportunities of improvement con- 
sidered ; nevertheless it is manifest that the writer sup- 
posed himself to be addressing persons who, as well in 
their biblical accomplishments, as in the keenness of 
their intellectual habits, vastly surpassed that average of 
mental power and learning which is to be found in our 
Protestant congregations. A verse-by- verse commentary, 
aided by all the stores of our modern biblical erudition, 
is not more than is needed to give even a well instructed 
and intelligent congregation a thorough comprehension 
of the reasoning of some parts of this Treatise. Those 
passages in it which, in their tone, rise above the tem- 
perature proper to biblical expository reasoning, are those 
in which the calmness of heaven's own atmosphere gives 
majesty to the language of the writer : of this sort are 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 193 

the opening verses of the treatise, and the middle portion 
of the twelfth chapter. 

This Treatise — with its incidental allusions, its refer- 
ences to the then-existing Jewish economy, its tranquil 
and refined trains of argument, its pointed admonitions, 
its tone of serious intensity, is, in itself, an Historic 
Mass : it is a Reality of the Apostolic times ; — and as 
such it is competent to sustain whatever is found to be 
inseparably attached to it. 

The persons addressed were thoroughly conversant 
with Jewish institutions, as also with the conventional 
sense of those forms of speech which had their source 
in the Old Testament Scriptiu-es, and which had long- 
been familiar to the Jewish ear, through the medium of 
the Greek version. 

The writer, in his exordium, affirms the surpassing 
dignity of Him to whom' the new dispensation owes its 
origin ; and having done so, he draws the natural infer- 
ence, that a negligent regard to it will involve so much 
the more guilt and danger. This Gospel message which 
was first announced, he says, by the Lord, had been con- 
firmed toward the Christians of that time by those who 
had heard Christ himself — " God bearing witness (to the 
truth of their testimony) with signs and wonders ; and 
divers powers, and bestowments of the Holy Spirit, ac- 
cording to His pleasm-e." 

To Jewish ears these phrases carried a conventional 
meaning that stood clear of all ambiguity: it is an 
authentic formula of the Old Testament, bringing recol- 
lections with it that embraced the staple of the national 





194 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

belief. Think what we may of the articles of that be- 
lief^ these phrases recalled to the mind of the Jew of 
the apostolic age, that long series of miracles which had 
placed the people in a position of the nearest relationship 
with God. The words and the combinations of them are 
identical throughout the Old Testament, and the New 

— Kai eSijJKe Kvpiog (Tr]fiua kol ripara juieyaXa to. 

(jr]jiua KOI ra repara ra juLeyaXa tfcava : they occur 

frequently in the Pentateuch, in the Psalms, and in the 
Prophets. They had come also into current use in the 
Christian community, in connexion with events admitted 
to be supernatural, as appears in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles, throughout. 

Thus it is then that, in the course of a lengthened 
argumentation which discusses or alludes to a round 
of religious topics, bringing the ancient and the new 
economy into comparison in various points of vicAV, there 
occurs one, and only one, affirmation concerning mira- 
cles ; but then this one is perfectly explicit ; and it is so 
worded that the persons addressed could not misunder- 
stand the writer. He affirms that those who had been 
the hearers of Christ, and who had reported the Gospel 
message to the Christian converts of the then present 
time, had, in delivering this message, received the same 
sort of attestation from God himself, which had been 
granted to Moses and the Prophets. 

And as nothing vague could attach to the wording of 
this passage, and as it stands boldly prominent in a con- 
text of peculiar gravity, so did it receive a more than 
ordinary weight of meaning from the circumstances of 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 195 

the persons addressed. It was to the Jewish converts, 
still resident in Palestine, that the Treatise was prima- 
rily addressd, and through them, no doubt, to the same 
class of persons throughout the world. These Pales- 
tinian Jewish Christians, among whom there were sm-- 
viving some who themselves had listened to Christ's 
discourses, and had witnessed his miracles, were in a 
position materially unlike that of the Gentile converts in 
distant countries. Not only were they resident on the 
spot where the Evangelic history took its rise ; but they 
consorted everywhere with those of their countrymen 
who virulently denied the Messiahship of Jesus. The 
alleged miracles of that history were rife matters of de- 
bate — in Jewish families — in synagogues — ^in the market- 
places — on the high ways — in the areas of the Temple. 

How then do we purpose to deal with the fourth verse 
of the second chapter of this Epistle ? There is no pre- 
text for cutting it out of its place : it stands where it 
stands, unimpeachable on critical grounds. It attests 
this fact, first^ that apostolic men — this writer at least — 
did not hesitate boldly to affirm the occurrence of mira- 
cles among those to whom the idea of such attestations 
of a message from God was intelligible and familiar. It 
establishes also this fact, that Jewish converts of that 
time customarily admitted the reality of such occurrences. 
If they had not done so there could not have been room 
for an unexplained and categorical affirmation of them, 
such as this. 

If the alleged miracles of that time had been very few, 
and these few of ambiguous quality, and if they had 

o 2 



196 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF, 

barely been recognized by Palestinian converts, there 
would either have been no allusion to them (as there are 
none in fourteen of the apostolic epistles) or something- 
would have been said of them in the style, either of 
apology, or of asseveration. This simply worded passage 
of three lines would have been introduced or followed by 
a verse or two of oblique insinuation, or of evasion, 
saving a way of escape for the writer. 

The question I put, in this instance, is this. — Sup- 
posing the alleged miracles of the apostolic period to be 
real, then is not this brief, bold, and unambiguous 
reference to them just what is natural in the case of a 
writer who himself is conscious of truth, who knows that 
the phrases he employs carry a determinate biblical 
meaning, and who forecasts no contradiction ? 

This passage in this Epistle may be thrown out of its 
place, as to its historic import, by supposing that the 
writer was a man of that class who, devoid alike of shame 
and of sensibility, allow themselves to use boastful ex- 
pressions, at random, which are well understood to have 
no meaning — vauntings, Avhich are the mere expletives 
of a rambling rhapsody, forgotten as soon as uttered, 
and disregarded when heard. 

Tell me plainly, do you profess this to be your judg- 
ment in this case? 



The Epistle to the Komans is also a Treatise rather 
than an Epistle ; its authenticity and genuineness are out 
of question ; or if you would fortify your English 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF 197 

distaste of the frivolities of German criticism, acquaint 
yourself with that tissue of surmises on the giound 
of which the genuineness of the iSfteenth and six- 
teenth chapters has been questioned. The continuity 
of thought, running on from the fourteenth into the 
fifteenth chapter, and thence to the end of the Epistle, 
is irresistibly conspicuous. The thought and the lan- 
guage are all of a piece, from the first verse to the last 
of this Treatise. Why then determine otherwise ? Be- 
cause the gratification of a pedantic ambition, and the 
craving for paradox, may find a momentary opportunity 
in an instance of this sort. 

With the theology of this Epistle I have nothing to 
do at this time ; nor with the ethical portions of it, un- 
less to say, in passing, that, following as they do as 
inferences from the theology, they present to us an 
instance most remarkable, of an equipoise of principles, 
not logically wrought out, but springing from a harmony 
that is loftier and deeper than the range of mundane 
speculation. 

But now find me any where a sample of practical good 
sense more striking than is that presented in the four- 
teenth chapter, and running on into the next. These 
six and twenty verses, if they had been duly regarded 
on every occasion to which they might rightfully have 
been applied, in the course of eighteen centuries, would 
have exempted the loaded shelf opposite me, just now, 
from the weight of at least ten of the folios of the Acta 
CONCILIORUM. But great principles, when simply an- 



198 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF 

nounced, demand cycles of time for getting themselves 
recognized — cycles as long almost as geological eras. 

This Epistle, like the one last named, contains one, 
and only one affirmation as to miracles, as events then 
occurring. But this one averment is, like that last re- 
ferred to, explicit, and bold, and it is unaccompanied by 
any expletive or extenuating phrases. It goes further, 
however, in relation to my present argument, than the 
passage cited from the Epistle to the Hebrews. In that, 
the writer does not affirm for himself the exercise of mi- 
raculous gifts : in this he does so very distinctly. In 
this Epistle ^^Paul the Apostle of Jesus Christ" stands 
before us in a clear historic light, connecting himself 
with the supernatural. Up to the time of writing it, he 
had not made proof of his ministry among the Christians 
of Rome. He had long been wishing to do so, and he 
now believed that, at no very remote time, this, his Chris- 
tian wish, might be accomplished ; for after he had fal- 
fiUed his immediate intention of visiting Jerusalem, he 
hoped to make his way into Spain, and to see Rome in 
passing. His course of evangelic labour, hitherto, had 
occupied more time than, perhaps, he had calculated 
upon ; for he had taken a very wide circuit in adhering 
to his rule, not to build on another man's foundation. 

Thus he had gone preaching the Gospel throughout 
all the countries intervening, landwise, between Jeru- 
salem and Italy. Many, in these regions, had listened 
to him, and had become " obedient to the faith ;" yet it 
had not been by preaching alone that these successes had 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 199 

been won; for it was by "word and deed'''' that the 
people had been persuaded to forsake their idols. From 
"Jerusalem^ and round about unto lUyricum/' he had 
(every where and) in a complete manner, made procla- 
mation of the Gospel ; and in doing so he had given 
proof of the reality of his mission by " mighty signs and 
wonders," which Christ had wrought by his hands. 

This noted affirmation has often been adduced by 
Christian advocates ; yet there may be room for me to 
bring the facts once again under review ; as thus. — 

The resort of Jews to Rome, and the access which 
they had gained for themselves to persons of all ranks, 
even the highest, had been the means of introducing 
many to a knowledge of the Scriptures, in the Greek 
version. Among these " devout persons" — Gentiles by 
birth and habit, Christianity rapidly made converts; and 
unimpeachable evidence attests the fact that, in Nero's 
reign, the number of Christians at Rome was very great. 

These Gentile converts were well conversant with the 
Old Testament history, and were accustomed to the 
recitation of the Psalms, and to the hearing of the Pro- 
phets. This sort of familiarity with biblical history, and 
with the phraseology of the Scriptures, imdoubtedly be- 
longed to those to whom were addressed the now extant 
non-canonical epistles of the first and second centuries. 

Besides ; the Epistle to the Romans itself furnishes 
abundant evidence of the diffusion of this amount of 
biblical knowledge among those to whom it is addressed. 
Gentiles as well as Jews. St. Paul now writes to these 
converts, announcing his intention to visit them shortly. 



200 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

He tells them that he had lately been employed preach- 
ing the Gospel in many provinces of the empire. He 
speaks too of the miracles that had everywhere given 
efficacy to his preaching ; and in doing so he uses that one 
set of phrases to which the ears of the people had been long 
accustomed, and which, in their minds, stood connected 
with the notable miracles of the Old Testament history. 
In using this particular form of words ^ St. Paul perfectly 
knew in what sense they would be understood when the 
Epistle was read in the Christian congregations of 
Rome. 

These congregations, numbering hundreds of persons, 
if not thousands, were told that they were soon to see 
and hear this noted preacher of the Gospel who, in his 
course from city to city of the Roman world, had wrought 
miracles of such a kind that the phrase ^^ mighty signs 
and wonders," might with propriety be applied to them. 
But at length this Preacher, he having appealed to 
Csesar's tribunal, reaches Rome : he stays there a length 
of time : in what manner then does he meet and satisfy 
those expectations which he had himself excited among 
the people ? This we are not told. But it appears that 
he found his countrymen there, or the greater part of 
them, ill-affected toward the new religion, and more dis- 
posed to listen to those many reports to its disadvantage 
w^hich had reached them, than to his arguments in 
its favour. An open breach soon takes place between 
the gainsaying Jews of Rome, and this Preacher of the 
Gospel, who denounces, and in fact, defies them. 

What would next follow may be surmised ; but let 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 201 

US assume that the passage above cited in the Epistle 
meant nothing — or nothing that would bear inquiry : the 
words were a mere flourish — a rhetorical grace ! Neither 
did this Preacher show any ^^ signs or wonders" at Kome, 
answerable to the kindled expectations of the people; nor 
did those who^ from time to time, arrived fi'om the pro- 
^dnces he had evangelized, bring with them authentic 
or credible reports of any such miracles as those which 
the language of the writer implied. What effect so great 
a disappointment as this must have produced among the 
Christian people of Rome, I will not venture to aJflSrm. Let 
it only be remembered that these newly professed Chris- 
tians were of three classes, namely — -Jirstj Jewish con- 
verts having constantly to do, in their homes, with those 
of their countrymen who were virulently opposed to the 
Gospel, and who were now the irritated personal enemies 
of Paul : — secondly J Gentile converts, from the populace 
of Rome, whose natural eagerness to witness ^^ signs and 
wonders" had been whetted by Paul himself; and — 
tliirdly^ a few persons of rank and education, about the 
Court, who, in compromising themselves with the new 
sect, even in the most cautious •manner, had risked 
every thing — life, as well as fortune. 

In what way these several classes of believers were 
affected when, after a three or fom* years suspense, they 
found that, in fact, no miracles were to be looked for in 
attestation of this preacher's mission, or in justification 
of his own professions, we do not know. 

But what we do know is this — that, three or four years 
later, there were Christians enough in Rome to slake 



202 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the ferocity of Nero — even the — multitudo ingens, of 
Tacitus. 

Now this ^^ vast multitude" — or let us take the words in 
their lowest probable meaning, whatever that may be — 
had either professed Christianity at the time when the 
Epistle from Paul reached them, or else there had been 
a great accession of converts during the intervening three 
or four years. 

If we take the first-named of these suppositions then 
one must think it a serious matter (if we know any thing 
of popular excitability) to disappoint the — ^multitudo in- 
gens in regard to these promised supernatural attestations. 
Knowing that he must disappoint the multitude at Rome 
in this very manner, then the boldness of the language 
in which, only a few days after his arrival, he defies 
the Jews, and makes his appeal to the Gentiles, is in- 
deed amazing. Acts, xxviii. 

But we now take up the second of these suppositions, 
and assume that, though the Christians of Rome had 
been few when the Epistle before us reached them, the — 
multitudo ingens had been " added to the Church " after 
the occurrence of this signal disappointment ^ and after 
the time when the gainsaying Jew had been put in a 
triumphant position, and was warranted in defying this 
Preacher to make good his written pretentions ! Is this 
then our supposition ? To me a belief in the Christian 
miracles is far more easy. 



One affirmation only, concerning miracles, we have 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 203 

found in the Epistle to the Hebrews ; one in that to the 
Romans ; one in the Epistle to the Galatians ; one in the 
second Epistle to the Corinthians. In each of these 
single instances the allusion is cursory; it arises out of 
the occasion, and it is firmly agglutinated with the con- 
text. Moreover to each of these instances there attaches 
some special circumstance, rendering this sort of cate- 
gorical averment in a high degree dangerous, if, in fact, 
it had been liable to any sort of exception. It was so, 
peculiarly, in the instance now in hand. 

Throughout the scattered societies of GrALATiA, and 
among a people remarkable for the fickleness of their dis- 
positions, and for their proneness to be led and driven by 
demagogues, the apostolic authority of St. Paul had 
been set at defiance, or was openly impugned, while the 
doctrine he had taught was denounced. Up and down 
throughout this province, and scattered among its ob- 
scure towns, where they could not be followed, there 
were, as the writer of this Epistle knew, those who 
stood forward as his personal enemies, and who were 
ready to catch an advantage against him. 

Nevertheless, in the bosom of these distracted societies 
there were some to whose better feelings he might still 
appeal — some there were who adhered to the evangelic 
doctrine — some who professed and contended for, the 
" faith once delivered " to them. We must infer also from 

the expression 6 ovv lTn\opnyC)v vfuv that there was 

one Teacher among the Galatian converts who continued 
to maintain that foremost article of the Christian system 
which was its characteristic, as contrasted with the Pha- 



204 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

risaic Judaism of the times, and wliich, in this epistle, 
8t. Paul expounds anew. The position of this one 
Teacher, in the midst of the general defection, must 
have been that of antagonism ; and it was with him, as 
we may infer from the phrases used, that remained the 
power of working miracles. 

The appeal made to the supernatural endowments of 
this one Teacher (if our inference from the form of ex- 
pression be historically right) was in the highest degree 
fearless. But whether or not an Individual so distin- 
guished, be here intended, or whether the apostle, though 
using the present tense, means to remind the people of 
his own ministrations among them, in times past, this 
brief challenge is in the style of one who feels that he risks 
no contradiction, as to the matter of fact; he says. Are 
ye then indeed so unwise ? after accepting Christianity 
as a spiritual system, are ye now going back to a system 
of bodily observances ? Has it then been to no purpose 
(as the professors of a spiritual doctrine) that ye have 
suffered so much (at the hands of Jewish fanatics) if in- 
deed it has been to no purpose ! Or answer me now this 
question — He (the Teacher) who now ministers to you the 
gifts of the Spirit, and who works miracles among you — 
KoX 6 Ivepywv Swa/iug — is he a teacher of the legalizing 
doctrine ? or does he not maintain the doctrine of salva- 
tion by faith, which I am now explaining to you anew ? 

This question followed hard upon a taunt, the pun- 
gency of which finds no parallel in the other epistles of 
this writer, affectionate and courteous too, as he is. He 
calls these Galatians avor^Toi ; and he asks who it is that 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 205 

has SO far abused their folly as actually to bereave them 
of their senses ? 

No inference which I judge to be important is de- 
pendant upon what may be a questionable paraphrase of 
this passage. The fact is enough that St. Paul, to whom 
the recollection of his miraculous powers does not ever 
occur when he is addressing his attached friends^ boldly 
affirms them, or affirms the same gifts in his colleagues^ 
when he descends among his adversaries. This he does 
when, as in the present instance, he intends to keep no 
terms of amity with his opponents; and he does the same 
whether the tempers he had to do with were more or less 
virulent. 

Note this fact that those of the epistles of St. Paul 
which contain affirmations of the supernatm^al, are those 
in which he encounters his adversaries, and administers 
sharp rebukes, even to his attached adherents. It is also 
to be observed that, when we name those of his fourteen 
epistles which are the most distinctly marked with the 
historic characteristics of genuineness, we are naming 
also those in which he affirms the present occurrence of 
miracles. It is thus that the purely historic and the 
supernatural are, as one may say, inseparably rivetted 
together in these writings. 



It is so in the two Epistles to the Christian people of 
Corinth. If there be anything at all that has come down 
to us from antiquity, whole and unquestionable, these 
two epistles will take a place among such oiuLoXoyovfieva-j 



206 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and if in any instance an ancient writer has spread him- 
self out, and opened the door of his heart to our inspec- 
tion, St. Paul has done so in these two epistles. 

I take up fir St J the second epistle, containing as it does 
one passage that is applicable to my immediate purpose. 
This is the twelfth verse of the twelfth chapter. 

There might be room to think that the remarkable 
passage with which this same chapter commences, should 
also be named as an afiirmation of the supernatural. It 
is so in reality ; but it is not so in a logical sense ; or as 
bearing out the inference upon which I have to insist. 
The sort of affirmations I am in quest of are those in 
support of which the writer may appeal, and does so, to 
the knowledge of those whom he addresses. St. Paul, 
in this case, necessarily, affirms only what belonged to 
his individual experience : he declares that thus he had 
been favoured with two extraordinary revelations ; but 
though the mention of them is proper to the occasion, 
they are not to be adduced as logically available in the 
present instance. 

Compelled as he was by the audacity of his opponents 
at Corinth to assert, and to vindicate, his apostolic au- 
thority, he reminds the people there of the circumstances 
that had attended his ministrations among them ; and he 
says that, feeble as he might be in himself, he had in 
no respect shown himself inferior to the most noted of 
the Apostles ; for the wonted attestations of an apostolic 
commission had been wrought (not simply affirmed) 
among them, with all submissiveness of manner, Iv 
(Tr^fieioLg koX Tspacrt /cat SvvafjLEcn. Here again we have 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF 207 

the customary biblical formula, and in its more expanded 
expression. 

We now turn to the first epistle to the Corinthians. 
In that one passage in the epistle to the Hebrews 
which links it to the supernatural, the persons addressed 
are reminded that they had witnessed miracles, wrought 
by those from whose lips they had received the Gospel 
message. In the epistle to the Romans, the writer 
affirms of himself that he had wrought miracles in the 
course of his late missionary journeys. In the epistle to 
the Churches of Galatia he appeals to the miracles that 
were then frequently wrought among themselves. In 
the second epistle to the Corinthians he speaks of the 
miracles wrought by himself during his stay at Corinth. 
In this first epistle he speaks, at large and particularly, 
and with perfect freedom, of the existence and exercise 
of miraculous gifts among themselves. 

He tells them generally (i. 7) that they had been 

wanting in no gift — Iv fxr^Sevl xapirrjUiaTi with which 

other churches had been favom-ed. These gifts he spe- 
cifies (xii. 4) mingling those Avhich are ordinary with 
the supernatural ; and this is so done as if to weave the 
two elements together in a fabric the materials of which 
should not be severed. ^^ To one among you is granted, 
by the same spirit — wisdom — to another knowledge ; — 
to one faith, to another charisms for healing, to another 
energies for mighty works — to another prophecy, to 
another the discrimination of spirits (or knowledge of 
character) to another (the command of) several languages ; 
— to another the interpretation of languages." 



208 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Further on the writer enumerates — apparently in the 
order of their relative importance in his view, the func- 
tions whicli were constituted, and which were then in 
exercise in the Church ; as thus — -firstj that of apostles ; 
next of prophets (or teachers) , then instructors, or masters 
of classes. After these come the functions of those who 
were endowed with miraculous powers, gifts of healing 
— faculties of administration, and management, and the 
command of languages. The order which prevails in 
these enumerations deserves attention. 

Between this more general declaratory passage, and 
those injunctions which a disorderly practice had called 
for, there comes a parenthesis — an entire chapter — 
luminous with good sense: ought we not to acknow- 
ledge this, and risk the consequence? If now it be 
Heaven's wisdom, of which we have such a sample, super- 
naturally granted to this writer, we need hold no further 
argument concerning Christianity. But if it be the 
writer's natural wisdom which here shines out, then how 
shall we make it consist with the supposition of the tumid 
extravagance of his mind ; or of any imaginable condition 
of conscious falseness in his professions or conduct ? But 
we have to mark here that these thirteen verses, teeming 
as they do with the very substance of ethical truth, 
and exhibiting so correct a sense of ethical distinctions, 
come in as a corrective of that natural error from which 
we have found the apostolic writers to be themselves 
wholly exempt — I mean the error of thinking more of 
miracles than of morality — more of "signs and wonders," 
than of temper and behaviour. If four or five of these 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 209 

gifted Corinthian converts had left us so many as one- 
and-twenty of their letters and treatises, I th'nk we 
should not have found fourteen of them destitute of a 
single affirmation as to their own command of the super- 
natural ; nor the remaining seven, each with nothing 
more than a brief and solitary allusion of this kind. 

But a word more should be said on this occasion. 
This thirteenth chapter of the epistle before us is a pa- 
renthesis, linking the purely historic instructions which 
precede it, mth other instructions, having relation to a 
misapplication of supernatural endowments. Here then 
we have the simply historic, or natural, blended and 
bound up with the supernatural, in such a manner as to 
defy the endeavour to separate the two. In the instances 
hitherto adduced I have noticed the iron rivetting of these 
two elements : in the present instance I ask, Is not this 
tie a bolt of the purest gold ? 

The rule I adhere to is to lay no stress upon any 
matter that is controverted among well-informed and 
reasonable critics and commentators. Now a great cloud 
of difficulty has been made to settle over the subject 
treated of in the fourteenth chapter of this Epistle ; 
so that what might seem quite intelligible when one 
reads the Greek without assistance, has become an enigma, 
after erudite criticism has shed its best light upon it ! 
Just now therefore I will say no more concerning the 
"Gift of Tongues" than this— That St. Paul himself 
does manifestly regard this power as a miraculous gift ; 
and as such he explicitly affirms his own participation 
in it : — rejoicing in the copiousness of the faculty which 

p 



210 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

he exercised, he says — ^^ I thank my God I speak with 
tongues more than you all." What was it then that he 
thus thought of with devout gratitude ? Was it that 
knowledge of Hebrew (or the Aramaic) of Greek and 
of Latin — which he ha& acquired at Tarsus in his boy- 
hood ? Or was it the power of pouring forth a mindless 
gibberish, intelligible to no tribe of men on earth ? 

It is enough that, in this passage, while the apostle 
exhibits his usual good sense, and his feeling of what is 
practically best, he speaks without hesitation of that 
which he regarded as supernatural. 



CONCLUSION AS TO THE SEVEN EPISTLES WHICH 
AFFIRM MIRACLES. 

I have now taken in their order those documents of 
the Canon which contain an affirmation of, or allusion to, 
miracles, as currently taking place under the eye of the 
writer, or of those whom he addresses. I have especially 
given attention to those five epistles of St. Paul which 
are distinguished from the nine of the same writer that 
are free from any reference to the supernatural. 

I have pointed out these three circumstances attaching 
to these epistles, namely, ^r^^, that they are those which, 
if there be any difference, stand the clearest of any sus- 
picion of spuriousness ; secondly^ that three of these epis- 
tles are those of the entire nmnher — fourteen — which 
are addressed to societies that had harboured or listened 
to, the personal enemies of the apostle, and in addressing 
which the greatest caution was needed ; — and thirdly y 
i;hat, if the first Epistle to the Corinthians be excepted — 
the affirmation of miracles is confined to a single utterance, 
which is brief, distinct, and peremptory. 

I have also drawn yom' attention to the fact — ^that, in 
each of these instances, that authenticated form of words 
is employed in relation to which misinterpretation was 
impossible, and to which a clearly defined historical 
sense had come to be attached. 

p 2 



212 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

But I will now imagine that, instead of employing 
this biblical formula, which none of those who were ac- 
customed to the Greek version of the old Testament 
could misunderstand, St. Paul had gone about in quest 
of a phrase which might be susceptible of a rather less 
rigid interpretation : let us suppose him to have used a 
phrase of abstract coinage — ^bordering upon the philoso- 
phical, and which the better-educated among his readers 
might so have interpreted as to leave a margin of indis- 
tinctness whereupon the writer might, at least in the 
view of such readers, clear himself of the charge of direct 
falsification. To me it seems perfectly certain that a 
religious leader in the position of this writer, if he had 
been conscious that the "miracles" of which he spoke 
must, when narrowly looked into by his adversaries, melt 
away into any thing or nothing — ^into mere exaggerations 
of natural occurrences, would have borrowed or forged a 
phrase adapted to his purpose ; and that he would most 
carefully have avoided that particular form of words 
which, in the minds of all, carried an indubitable mean- 
ing of the largest import. 

Let us now imagine that St. Paul, who had no narrow 
acquaintance with the resources of the Greek language, 
had employed, when speaking of the miracles that 
were lately wrought by himself, or his colleagues, some 
one of those very phrases which his erudite countryman 
and contemporary, Philo, does actually use on analagous 
occasions. For example, if instead of the ripara koX 
<TijjU£Ta, and the several phrases (all of biblical usage) 
which he does apply to his own miracles, he had given us 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 213 

a form like the following^ with an evasive expletive in- 
sertedj repaariov Si (paat (Tviufii'ivai Kar l/celvov rbv 

Xpovov, iuLeyaXovpyr}iuLa Trie (l>v(T£(i)g or that he had 

apologised for these miracles, as Philo does elsewhere 
in his Kfe of Moses. If it had been so, there might have 
been room for a supposition for whichj in fact, there is 
now no room. The biblical form, used when miracles of 
the most amazing kind are intended to be spoken of, had, 
in the apostolic time, come to be applied customarily to 
the miracles of the evangelic history; as appears from the 
Gospels. ]\Ioreover the same set of words occurs thirteen 
times in the Acts of the Apostles, always carrying 
the same indubitable sense. Once only, in speaking of 
such events, does the writer employ a different form 
(xix. 11) where it is — Svva/xetc ^^ ov rag rv^ovaaQ 

Ittoih 6 Qebg The form is the same in the Apocryphal 

books, as in the Epistles (Wisdom, viii. 8, x. 16, Eccles. 
xlviii. 14) in the Prophets ; (Jerem. xxxii. 20, Dan. 
vi. 27) in the Psalms ; cv. 27, cvi. 7 ; and the Penta- 
teuch, very frequently : — ExOD. iii. 20,— iv. 9, iv. 21, 

28, vu. 3 TO, <jr]fieia fxov^ koli Taripara Iv y^ AlyvTrrt^ 

— X. 2, Num. xiv. 11, Deut. iv. 34,— fcat Iv arifiuoig^ 

KCLi iv ripacTi : VI. 22, Kal bSwks Kvpiog (Trtjuiela koX 

ripara fxsyaXa KaX Trovrjpa Iv AlyvTTTtf) vii. 19, tcl 

<Tr\fxua Ktti TCL TspaTa to, jmeydXa iKetva xxxiv. 11, 

'Ev iraai Tolg (jr]fxdoig kol Tepacnv 

There are those who, professing to admire the character 
of Paul, would gladly bring him off clear of the impu- 
tation of having compromised himself with the super- 
natural, if it could be done. Looking to these five 



214 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

epistles this attempt might perhaps have been made if 
only he had been careful to avoid this biblical formula, 
and had taken up, in its place, any vague abstraction of 
the kind of which samples enough may be found in Philo, 
in Josephus, and in several of the classical writers, when 
speaking of prodigies. 

Let us now inquire by what means, if there are any, 
the supernatural might be severed from the mass of his- 
toric document to which we find it attached. 

These means must be such as do not in any way 
violate the authentic rules of philological or historical 
criticism. An attempted violation of such rules could be 
prompted by nothing but an ill intention ; and as in this 
argument I impute no bad motives to an opponent, I am 
saved the disagreeable necessity of rebutting any suppo- 
sition of that class. 

Now we first narrow our ground by putting out 
of view those fourteen epistles upon which we find no 
particles of the supernatural adhering. We need not 
inquire how to exclude miracles from writings in which, 
in fact, none are affirmed. 

These fourteen epistles are of a purely historical cha- 
racter : each of them comes into our hands bearing its 
own credentials, separately from the others. Even if 
ten of them could be shown to be spurious, the others 
stand their ground ; but instead of this, a mere shadow 
of doubt is all that attaches to two or three of the 
number: and even these avail as much in argument 
when imagined to be forgeries, as when admitted to be 
genuine. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 215 

Here then is foundation ample enough to sustain my 
Belief, as a Christian : I am willing to take my stand upon 
it; and never shall I be driven from this footing. K I have 
thoroughly informed myself concerning the Christianity 
of the age of the Antonines — ^reading the entire extant 
evidence — Christian and Antichristian — then, in these 
fourteen epistles I find whatever should be there, on the 
supposition that this great revolution which has placed 
the civilized portion of the human family on new 
ground, was real and true in its origin, and that it was 
THE WORK OF GoD. The present question then relates 
solely to those Seven Epistles which imbed our problem. 

Now these might be disposed of if, in a critical sense, 
they were decisively of inferior quality; but they are not 
so: on the contrary, they are those (one excepted) con- 
cerning which there has been, and is, the least dif- 
ference of opinion among critics. 

Or the supernatural paragraphs in these epistles might 
be excinded if, on any ground that is recognized by 
legitimate criticism, these sentences stood as interpola- 
tions. It is not so. On the contrary, as to most of them, 
these verses are woven into the context, before and after, 
and are one with the body of the epistle. 

And yet, even admitting the genuineness of these pas- 
sages, we might incline to attach an abated importance to 
them if any one of the following suppositions could be 
entertained. — If they occurred in those epistles only which 
are addressed to the writer's colleagues, or to societies of 
whose attachment to himself, and to Christianity, he was 
perfectly assured. But the very contrary of this is the fact. 



216 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

— If, instead of these few peremptory affirmations, we 
found a difFuse, turgid, and careless allusion to miracles 
on almost every page of the twenty-one epistles. The 
contrary of this, also, is the fact. 

— If, instead of employing, in these few instances, the 
well-understood biblical formula, to which an historic 
sense had come immoveably to adhere, the writers had 
quietly let themselves down through the medium of two 
Or three vague phrases, of which they might soon have 
found the type in several writers of that age. The con- 
trary of this also is the fact. 

The only remaining supposition which occurs to me as 
at all admissible, if our purpose be to set aside these 
passages, is this — That, as no miracles are specified^ 
and as no narratives of this kind are given in these 
epistles, it is not certainly to be inferred that the writers 
wished themselves to be understood in any very definite 
sense when they thus vaguely affirm such to have oc- 
curred. So we might perhaps suppose if no other Chris- 
tian writings of the apostolic age had come into our 
hands. But an undoubted book — containing many such 
narratives, is before us. I abstain from an examination 
of this Book — the Acts — at present, and turn to it only 
for a moment, as it stands related to the supposition just 
named ; and I affirm first — 

— That the historical relationship of this Book to the 
Pauline Epistles has been so exhibited, in modern times, 
as should exclude all question as to the genuineness of 
either — the history, or the so related, epistles : secondly — 

— That, in this book, as I have already said, the for- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 217 

mula which occurs in the epistles occurs also — and as 
often as thirteen times, and in connexion, each time, 
with narratives of miraculous events. In what sense 
these phrases were understood in the apostolic times is 
thus put out of doubt by this employment of them in 
such a connexion. 

I affirm therefore, that the apostles do implicate them- 
selves with the supernatural element of Christianity, and 
that they do it in the most formal and distinct manner 
possible ; and that therefore it is only by violent means 
that the supernatural can be severed from the historical, 
as the two stand connected in the Christian documents. 

What those means are which, in this case, ought to be 
regarded as ^^ violent" and should therefore be rejected, 
may easily be determined. To solve the problem of 
Christianity hj force is to admit some supposition, or to 
listen to an imputation to which a cultured and well 
ordered mind will never reconcile itself; and which 
would never be advanced, at all, by minds of any class, 
except at the impulse of some urgent argumentative ne- 
cessity. 

I bring this to an issue thus : — 

Make the effort requisite for putting yourself mentally 
into the position of one who, as yet knows nothing of 
Christianity. I put into your hands, in succession, the 
fourteen Non-Supernatural Epistles — You spontaneously 
say of them, " Whatever I may think of this Theology j 
which is so new and amazing, it is manifest that these 
writings embody, with great harmony of intention, an 
elevated and consistent morality; it would be well for 



218 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the world if it would receive it. It is also manifest that 
the Avriters, whether they be right or wrong in their 
religious belief, are sincere in their profession of it : — ^it 
appears also that they are sober minded, and of good 
judgment; — it is clear that they are earnestly affected in 
relation to whatever is of undoubted importance, and 
that they treat slightingly what we all feel to be indif- 
ferent." 

Thus far then you will not affirm that any of those 
sinister imputations which you hold in reserve for solving 
the problem of Christianity, would spontaneously be 
suggested to you in the course of your New Testament 
reading. But you next peruse the five, above mentioned, 
epistles of St. Paul ; or you take up the Epistle to the 
Romans. In reaching the close of it you are startled 
to find the writer, with whose inmost thoughts you had 
become familiar, boldly affirming that, in a missionary 
circuit of several hundred miles, he had wrought mira- 
cles, in each town and city as he passed. 

Under the perplexity that has thus arisen, I direct 
your attention to those several conditions attaching to 
this case which I have just above specified. These, 
if they are considered as they should be, and if we reject 
unintelligible evasions — myths, and shifts; — rejecting, in 
fact, what a well constituted English mind must and 
will reject as frivolous, impertinent, vapourous, and ab- 
surd, then om' alternative is just this. — 

To yield our belief to Christianity, as a supernatural 
dispensation ; — or. To suppose, I do not well know 
how to put such a supposition into words — that the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 219 

apostolic men^ not one of them, but all, stand as a 
class by themselves, of which no other samples have 
occurred among the myriad varieties of the species : 
for they are wise and mad — they are always virtu- 
ous, and wicked — they are prudent and absurd — in 
an extreme degree, and they are at all times con- 
sistently inconsistent with themselves, and with 
human nature. 
Language has been framed for expressing things that 
are, or things that may be intelligibly conceived of. 
You will therefore find an extreme difficulty in attempt- 
ing to give me, in any definite shape, your own idea of 
the apostles, the facts duly taken into the ax^count^ on the 
supposition that no miracles were wrought in attestation 
of their ministry. In this attempt you will never suc- 
ceed, to your own satisfaction. 

I will not tell you that your supposition as to the apos- 
tolic character is " uncharitable," is " unwarrantable," 
is " ungenerous," and the like ; for I am content to tell 
you, what is simply the fact, That it is a jumble of in- 
coherencies to which no semblance of moral, or of im- 
moral imity can be given. I do not tell you that your 
conception is wrong and unfair ; — for it is no conception 
at all — it is a naked absurdity! I wiU return to this 
subject at any time if only you will put before me, in 
a form which I can understand, your idea of the apostles 
— all the facts allowed for, on the hypothesis of Dis- 
belief. 



THE FORCE OF CONGRUITY, IN RELATION TO CHRIS- 
TIANITY AND ITS MIRACLES. 

It would next come in order to bring under considera- 
tion those Five Books of the New Testament which 
contain narratives of miracles, blended with ordinary 
history, and with discourses — showing, in detail, that, 
throughout these books, the supernatural and the histo- 
rical are indissolubly commingled. This might soon be 
shown ; but I abstain from this open path for two rea- 
sons ; first, because the demolition of Rationalism by 
Strauss, and its abandonment generally, supersedes the 
necessity for showing that the evangelic miracles cannot 
be explained away in the manner that was attempted by 
the German writers of that school. But beside this 
reason, as I propose to bring before you this same super- 
natural element, considered in a very different light, I 
wish to avoid the irksomeness of going over the same 
ground twice, although it would be for different pur- 
poses. 

I must repeat what I have already said, p. 102, just 
SO far as to remind you that those of our convictions upon 
which we are accustomed to act with the most unhesi- 
tating confidence, and to which we commend ourselves 
without fear, when life itself, or estate, is at risk, are 
not J or seldom are, those which we may obtain by pro- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 221 

cesses of catenary deduction ; or by a course of rea- 
soning wliichj in a technical sense, is logical. It is not 
so. Man, such as we find him on the beaten road of real 
life, is no such syllogistic automaton as that he should 
bring propositions in threes to bear upon the business 
and conduct of every day. Pedants do this, and break 
their heads in consequence. It is by the force of 
congruous evidence — it is by help of wind and tide 
together, that we launch upon the dangerous atlantic 
of life, and cross it in confidence, and reach port in 
safety. 

The vast difference, as to its bearing upon our princi- 
ples of action, and our every-day habitudes, between 
catenary reasoning, and the force of Congruity is 
felt in the instance of the argument concerning Chris- 
tianity more than perhaps in any other case that could 
be named. Let it be that, with favourable impressions 
on the side of Christianity, and with a sincere wish to 
confirm ourselves in our religious belief, we carefully 
read one or two of the best modern books on the " Evi- 
dences." We follow the reasoning, from page to page, 
and we yield our assent to it, feeling it to be entirely 
conclusive. To frame a reply to this chain of proofs in 
any manner that should be satisfactory to ourselves, we 
know to be impossible. And yet a few days after closing 
the book the upshot of the perusal of it has been to leave 
us — not in a state of logical indecision, but only of dis- 
comfort and depression, as to our convictions; and we 
almost wish we had not attempted thus to convince our- 
selves. 



222 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

We need not go far to find the reason of such a result. 
Those who read books on the "Evidences" in the fa- 
vourable mood which I am now supposing, perfectly 
know that, if Christianity be true it is not an abstract 
speculation, but a practical concernment for every day, 
and that among the many claimants upon our attention, 
this one claim stands foremost. But now the reasoning 
of the book we have just read is out of harmony with the 
machinery of real life ; for a man does not act at a 
prompting of this sort. The argument, although it be 
irrefragable, comes upon us cross-grained as to all our 
habitudes as deliberative and spontaneous beings. In 
fact — after several failures in the endeavour to feel 
and act as Christian men, on the ground of argument, 
among the things and persons of the real world, we 
return the book on the " Evidences" to a high shelf — 
forget it, except to lend it to a perplexed friend, and for 
ourselves, resume our Christian consciousness: uncon- 
sciously, but really, we go back to those undefined 
moral congruities which heretofore have sustained our 
belief; and we abandon ^roo^ ^^ Z/y^e. 

Nevertheless as often as we return to the subject as 
a matter of argument, we find ourselves in a position 
of disadvantage. At a point far removed from the eye, 
and at the end of a vista of logical evidences, we get our 
view of the miracles of the EvangeKc history. For a 
length of time we have been fixing the eye upon the 
supernatural, as it appears when seen in this perspective ; 
just as one might gaze upon a sunrise, seen through the 
Ibare trunks and naked branches of a wintry forest. Yet 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 223 

this aspect of these objects is not merely remote and 
accidental ; but it produces an impression which is 
substantially untrue. 

Without any very difficult effort of the mind, I can 
imagine myself to occupy a position whence I should 
look upon the miracles of the Evangelic History in 
their immediate proximity to those things with which, 
actually, they always stood connected. I should then 
see the Supernatural in its relationship to the 
Infinite, which is its true relation. When I place 
myself in this position I at once discern the reason of 
that which otherwise is unaccountable, I mean the fact 
already noticed, that the apostolic men, though they 
declare themselves to be conversant mth miracles, yet so 
seldom, and with such brevity, mention them. From 
this position, moreover, that perfect simplicity, and that 
calmness which has been so often remarked as the charac- 
teristic of the Gospels, when miracles are narrated, 
appears only natural and proper. 

There are three mental conditions, easily distinguish- 
able from each other, in which I can imagine an indubitable 
miracle to be witnessed. The first is that of medieval 
credulity — or an incurious, unreasoning, inconsequential 
passiveness, to which all things, natural and supernatural, 
come alike, and pass away without leaving an impres- 
sion. The second state is that of our modern, dry, cold, 
sophisticated, scientific temper ; — scientific more than 
philosophical. Witnessed in this mood, a miracle would 
astound us — it would just curdle the brain, and produce 
no effect whatever upon the moral nature. 



224 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

But I can form an idea of a mental condition as mucli 
unlike the first of these two states, as the second. I 
can imagine myself to have come into a discernment of 
those unchanging realities of the spiritual and moral 
system which indeed affect my welfare, present and 
future ; so that the witnessing of a miracle would pro- 
duce a feeling entirely congruous with such perceptions; 
and would neither astound nor agitate the mind. I can 
imagine myself to have so profound a sense of primary 
moral truths as that miracles would be confluent with the 
deep movements of the soul, and would produce no surge. 
I can imagine myself to have such a prospect of the plains 
of immortality — a prospect moral^ not fanciful, not sen- 
suous, as that the spectacle of the raising of the dead 
should assort itself with my feelings. So to see " death 
swallowed up in victory," would excite no amazement. 
I read this very quietness in the apostolic epistles ; and it 
sheds the steady brightness of the morning upon St. 
Paul's discourse concerning the resurrection. This great 
fact, concerning the destiny of man, which he there 
expounds, I also hold to be a truth, undoubted. But 
if, beside thus believing it with my modern logical per- 
suasion, if instead of this belief, I had St. Paul's sight 
and consciousness of it, then, like him, I could speak of 
miracles briefly, firmly, and without a note of wonder. 

The miracles of the evangelic history come to us with 
the force of Congruity, just so far as we can bring our- 
selves morally within the splendour of those eternal 
verities which are of the substance of the Gospel. While 
we stand remote from that illuminated field, they are to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 225 

US only a galling perplexity ; for we can neither rid our- 
selves of the evidence that attests them ; nor are prepared 
to yield ourselves to it. At this moment the Christian 
argument is an intolerable torment to hundreds of culti- 
vated minds around us. 

In the crowd of those who witnessed the miracles of 
Christ there were some who mocked ; there were some 
who gnashed their teeth ; there were many who mar- 
velled and applauded, and soon forgot what they had 
seen. But there were some into whose minds the 
doctrine — the moral purport — the spiritual reality of his 
discourses had so entered that, beside being conscious of 
the fitness of which already I have spoken, they felt, 
with overwhelming force, a Congruity of another kind ; 
I mean that of these miracles with the majestic bearing 
and style of Him who wrought them ; for he did these 
^^ mighty works" with the spontaneous ease of one in 
whom this power, and much more was inherent. 

From what sources have I gathered my idea of the 
personal aspect and demeanour of Christ ? You will say 
from the groundless traditions of Italian art — from our 
modem religious poetry — from the pulpit, and so forth. 
It may be so in part ; but the main rudiments of this 
idea have come to me — I am sure — fi^om a year-to-year 
reading of the Grospels — commentaries, translations, 
and all modern accompaniments out of view. This vivid 
conception is the genuine product of the Evangelic nar- 
ratives, to which I have added nothing by imaginative 
eifort. It is not that the writers have described to me this 
Person, or that they have given me a leading hint, here 

Q 



226 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and there, to put me on the right tack. An image has 
concreted itself in my mind, whether I would or not. 
So far as I have laboured with it at all, it has been for the 
purpose of reducing it to its very simplest expression — 
removing from it the pictorial — the poetic — the dramatic 
—the meditative decorations, and bringing it to consist 
with the most rigid conception of the plain historic 
reality, as to the country — the age — the race — the cos- 
tume. 

This idea of the personal aspect and demeanour — the 
individual manner and style of Christ, I find to be con- 
gruous with the narratives of his ^^ mighty works," ON 
ONE SUPPOSITION ONLY ; on any other supposition the 
incongruity is irresistibly revolting. I possess no such 
power over the intellect, or the moral intuitions, or the 
ideal faculty, as would be requisite for bringing any such 
repellant conceptions into combination. You will say 
that this Ideal is mine not yours ; that you have no 
such conception ; and therefore that you feel no such 
difficulty. But now, indulge me while I give you credit 
for a remainder of those sensibilities which perhaps you 
would disown. 

You will not tell me that a consciousness is unreal, 
merely because I fail in my endeavours to give it in- 
telligible expression, or indeed to put it into words at all. 
Do not the uncultured minds around us possess a genuine 
consciousness, as to moral principles, in behalf of which — 
either to explain, or to defend them, they would not have 
a word to say ? Or take an instance such as this. — I 
have a consciousness of the vast difference between the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 227 

Greek sculpture of the purest times, and the Roman 
style, of the imperial times, which consciousness is to 
me as much a matter of certainty as is any other thing 
whatever that has become an inseparable part of my ex- 
istence. The difference between the one style of chip- 
ping marble into the human form, and the other, is so 
clear in my view, that, to confound the two, or to mistake 
the one for the other, is impossible ; and yet I should 
shrink from the attempt to set this same perception forth 
in sentences and paragraphs : I can do no such thing. 
Meantime you might as well tell me that honey and mo- 
lasses have the same flavour, as try to convince me 
that this discriminative feeling is a mere illusion, or that 
it is a vulgar prejudice, belonging to my artistic orthodoxy. 
The sense of congruity which I have now in view, 
stands related to that moral regeneration which has 
placed our modem civilization so far in advance of the 
ancient civilization. To the ancient civilization — that, to 
wit, of the Athenian age, there belonged a puiity of 
Taste which we, of this time, must be content to admire, 
and very poorly to imitate. But then in our modem 
literature, and in our poetry especially — in our fine.arts — 
sculpture, painting, and music, there is a deep soul-life 
of which the entire circle of ancient art and literature 
barely offers the faintest indications. To the modem 
mind there has come to belong an awful capacity of feel- 
ing, and a liability to intensities, both of suffering and 
of enjoyment (the one as well as the other intellectual, 
not sensuous) of which the bright, gay, surface-loving 
mind of antiquity seems to have known little or nothing. 

Q 2 



228 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Then along with this power of feeling, striking, as it 
does, into the roots of the soul, there are perceptions, 
and instinctive judgments of which it must be said that 
they are altogether modern developments of humanity ; 
they are true elements of our nature ; but they have 
newly been brought from the sub-soil. 

It is to the slow working of Christianity upon human 
nature that I attribute nearly the whole of this deeper 
vitality of the modern mind : You think otherwise ; but 
yet our difference as to the cause cannot affect our ac- 
knowledgment of the fact. If you should deny the^ac^, 
I must think of you not merely as anti-Christian ; but as 
downright pagan. 

Often and truly it has been said that the writers of the 
Gospels were men wholly incapable of imagining or of 
putting together a consistent fiction of any kind. But 
to say this is to say little in relation to the instance 
which I have now in view ; for the accordance which 
comes upon my modern consciousness with so irresistible 
a force is of a sort to which the ancient world entire, cul- 
tured and uncultured — Greek, Roman, or Jewish, was 
not alive. Not only were there then no writers skilful 
enough, designedly, to bring together those elements of 
harmony ; but even if there had been such writers, there 
were then no readers to whose senses any such harmony 
would have been cognizable. 

It is allowed that the miracles of the Gospels are, for 
the most part, narrated in the fewest words, and in the 
most artless manner. Then abreast of these narratives, 
and intermingled with them, come the instances of 



I 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 229 

Christ's behaviour, in various positions, and his utter- 
ances of those ethical principles which are peculiarly 
Christian. Now between these elements which are here 
found in juxta-position, there presents itself a congruity 
which the modern mind vividly perceives, but of which 
the ancient mind would scarcely have been conscious at 
all. The ancient mind formed a conception of the 
Goetes, and of the Thaumaturge, in which conception 
the sombre, inscrutable element was the leading prin- 
ciple. The man so conceived of, and of whom types 
enough, in all their varieties, might be seen in Egypt, 
that seat of jugglery, was the murky or the epileptic 
supernaturalist. Antiquity had not conceived of a worker 
of miracles in whose course of life and behaviour the 
working of miracles showed itself as a secondary and 
incidental element, and in whose character Love was of 
the substance, while the supernatural faculty was the 
adjunct. 

Whencesoever the materials of the Gospels may have 
come, and it is the office of criticism to inquire whence, 
this is certain, that they do convey an Idea of a Person, 
possessing, in an extraordinary degree, the charm of 
Unity, or singleness of intention. This idea may be 
variously expressed : it includes consistency of purpose, 
and the coherence of all principles of action ; it includes 
oneness of aim, from the commencement to the close of 
a course of life : it supposes uniformity of temper, and a 
sameness of the impression that is produced by the 
Person upon other minds. Then this idea excludes all 
those inconsequential departures from the main purpose of 



230 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

a man's life which, when we witness them, prompt the ex- 
clamation — ^^ How unaccomitable, and how inconsistent 
a being is man, at the best ! " 

If I wanted proof that this symmetry, moral and 
intellectual, does really belong to that idea of the person 
which the Gospels embody and convey, I should find it 
in the fact that, amid all the dogmatic distractions that 
have troubled Christendom, during eighteen centuries, 
there has prevailed, in all times, and among all Chris- 
tianized nations, a wonderful uniformity as to the idea 
that has floated before all minds of the PERSONAL Christ. 
Wherever the four Gospels are popularly read, this same 
conception forms itself and prevails. Infancy sponta- 
neously acquires it : manhood does not revise or reject 
it : — age holds it to the last. It is not in consequence 
of the poverty of the elements it embraces, or of any 
vagueness in the mode of conveyance, that this idea is 
so perfectly symmetrical. 

Now observe that this symmetry, or harmony of the 
elements, constituting the idea of Christ as a person, 
embraces the miraculous portions of the evangelic narra- 
tive, not less than the ordinary ; and indeed, if there 
are any parts of this narrative which a reader of correct 
taste would single out as resplendent instances of moral 
fitness and unity, they are precisely those that narrate 
miracles with the most of detail. 

It is affirmed by those who reject everything that pre- 
sents itself as miracle in the Gospels, that these four 
compilations have become what they now are by the ac- 
cumulation of heterogeneous fragments, vague traditions, 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 231 

exaggerated early beKefs, and myths. The Four Gos- 
pels, it is said, are constituted of a few morsels of 
genuine history, mingled with the illusions of the popular 
mind, that mind being then in a state like the " troubled 
ocean, casting up mire and dirt ;" and then it must be 
believed that, out of a random confluence, such as this, 
there has come a Personal Conception which is not 
merely morally beautiful, in the highest degree, but 
which, beyond all comparison, is symmetrical, and is 
exempt from discordant adjuncts. Are the chances as a 
million to one, or in what other proportion are they, 
that a conglomerate, mingling the true and the false (for 
you must except against all the miracles as false) should 
present an instance of congruity to which no equal can 
be found ? 

All the world, that is to say, readers of the Gospels, ten 
thousand to one, are conscious of this congruity, and dis- 
cern this moral beauty. You say you see little or nothing 
of the sort ; on the contrary, in the course of a strict 
criticism of these writings you have detected — how many 
is it ? — ninety-nine, or a hmidred-and-one, discrepancies 
(these gospel contradictions constituting, just now, the 
stock entire of Disbelief) ; or you admit a something of 
harmony in the merely historic ^^ Jesus of Nazareth 5" but 
you spurn the miraculous portion of the narrative. Yet 
you cannot effect this separation ; for the harmony is not 
divisible. The supernatural cleaves to the individual ; 
and the two elements constitute together the one person. 

Among these miracles there are no portents — such as 
are related by classic writers ; there are no exhibitions 



232 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

of things monstrous ; — there are no contrarieties to the 
order of nature ; there is nothing prodigious, there is 
nothing grotesque. Nor among them are there any of 
that kind that might be called THEATRIC. There are 
no displays of supernatural power, made in the pre- 
sence of thousands of the people, summoned to wit- 
ness them. Although claiming to be sent of God into 
the world, with a sovereign authority, Christ did not, 
as Elijah had done, convene the people, and then chal- 
lenge his enemies to dispute with him his mission by 
help of counter-attestations. 

Taken singly, and when regarded in relation to the 
circumstances out of which each of themx arose, the evan- 
gelic miracles were as spontaneous, and, in this sense^ 
they were as natural, as would be the acts of any one of 
ourselves who, while walking up and down in this world 
of suffering, should suddenly become conscious of a power 
to give effect to the promptings and yearnings of pity. 
When I tread the floor of an hospital — what is it that 
I would do if I could ? It is that which the Saviour of 
men did at the impulse of the very same sympathies, as 
often as the ^^ sick, and the maimed, and the blind" 
were brought in crowds, and laid at his feet — " He 
healed them all." 

What we have before us is not the Thaumaturge, 
going about to astound the multitude; but it is the Man, 
whose human affections are in alliance with Omnipo- 
tence. That hand uplifted, while the lips utter an 
axiom of virtue, symbolizes, at once perfect intelligence, 
absolute goodness, and irresistible power. If I can ima- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 233 

gine myself to stand in that presence, at such a time, I 
should have felt that the fixedness of the course of nature 
is onlj an arbitrary and temporary constitution; and 
that it must be less constant than are those energies of 
love, which are eternal. In the presence of him whose vo- 
litions flow out into act, without an interval, the difference 
between the natural and the supernatural, if it has not 
already vanished, seems to tremble upon the balance ; 
for nothing can be more natural than that omnipotent 
compassion should have its way. What is this material 
universe, in its vastness, and its variety, but the product, 
every moment, of the perpetual will of the Creator? 
If we believed ourselves to stand near to Him in whom 
the perfections of the Infinite Being dwelt bodily, a 
sovereign volition of one kind would not be accounted 
more difficult, or strange, than volitions of another 
kind. 

Considerations of this sort are thrown out as they 
suggest themselves, and they may be admitted or re- 
jected. What I insist upon may be condensed in these 
four allegations. 

i. — A distinct Individuality, in the historic sense of 
the word, presents itself, in the perusal of the 
Four Gospels : all the world feels this, and has 
felt it in every age. 
ii. — By the consent of mankind, or the involuntary 
suffrage of Christianized nations, ancient and 
modem, a perfect individual idea, combining 
the intellectual and moral qualities of One 
who is Avise, and good, and who is possessed 



234 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

of super-human power and authority, is em- 
bodied in the Four Gospels, 
iii. — This harmony, or, as we call it, beauty of cha- 
racter, in which there is no distortion, and 
with which nothing is mingled that is incohe- 
rent, is spread over the entire surface of the 
evangelic narratives, embracing the superna- 
tural incidents of the life of Christ, not less 
than the natural. In these narratives no seams, 
or joints, can be discerned, showing where the 
spurious portion has been spliced on to the 
genuine; but — 

iv. — If we reject Christianity, as true in its own sense, 
that is to say, as attested by miracles, then we 
must solve the problem before us by means of 
one of two suppositions, or of some other, not 
essentially differing from the one or the other, 
each of which, as it comes in turn to be con- 
considered, is inadmissible, and insufferable. 
These suppositions are either — That no historic 
reality whatever has formed the substratum of 
the Gospel history : in this case a perfect indi- 
viduality has sprung out of a congeries of illu- 
sions ; or — The merely natural portions of the 
evangelic history being true, the supernatural 
portions have been imagined, contrived, and 
fitted to their places, with so profound a skill as 
to defy all power of criticism to trace the joinings. 
Let Christianity solve its own problem in its own 

way, and then we stand clear of endless perplexities — 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 235 

having before us, in perfect symmetry— the Christ of 
God — the Saviour of the world. 

Let Christianity solve its own problem, in its own 
way, and then not only does this perfect congruity 
ensue connecting the Personal Character of Christ 
with his miraculous acts ; but a congruity connecting also 
these miracles with the Great Scheme of which they are 
the adjuncts. 

At intervals of frequent recurrence during the last two 
hundred years. Christian writers have carried on an ar- 
gTiment the conditions of which have compelled them to 
regard the miracles recorded in the Gospels under the 
one aspect of their present availahlenessj for the logical 
purpose of establishing the truth of Christianity, as a 
revelation from Heaven. Thus to appeal to these super- 
natural attestations is, no doubt, a legitimate mode of 
defence against infidelity. And yet it is not while we 
are placing ourselves in this accidental position, or when 
diiven in upon it by sophistry, that we shall ourselves be 
conscious of the real meaning of those same events as re- 
lated to the Scheme of Eeligion which they serve to 
attest. This scheme, so far as it is unfolded in the Scrip- 
tures, or may be thence gathered, inferentially, grasps 
the destinies of the human family from the first, and so 
stretches itself out in prospect as to leave nothing con- 
nected with those destinies which it does not embrace 
and provide for. 

Christianity must be looked at in its own light. So 
looked at, it is seen to fill all time, and to lay its hand 
upon the human species, comprehensively, and abso- 



236 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

lutely. No child of man is born beyond its domain ; 
none shall ever effect his escape into regions where its 
authority is not recognized. 

If the Gospel be thus thought of in the way in which 
itself claims to be considered, it will follow that the mi- 
nistry of Christ, as narrated by the Evangelists, must 
be misunderstood so long as it is regarded as a course of 
events bounded by the initial and the closing year of his 
life among men. Whether we number ourselves with 
believers, or with unbelievers, we shall continue to mis- 
interpret the facts, or to be perplexed by them, while we 
keep the eye upon that narrow field of five-and-thirty 
years. 

You will tell me I am about to assume the truth of 
Christianity in order that I may show it to be true. I 
admit that it is so, in great measure ; and it must be so, 
in the nature of things. So long as your mood of mind 
is this, that you will grant nothing which it is possible 
for you to deny, you will catch only a glimpse of things 
disadvantageously presented to the eye. But if you allow 
me to exhibit the same objects in their true position, and 
in their natural proportions, you will yourself see them 
to be real. After this you will not ask me to follow you 
from point to point in so rigid a manner. 

If I undertook to teach you the modem astronomy, 
and you would at once grant that my interpretation of 
the visible heavens is the true one, I should be able to 
convince you that it is so in much less time, and by a 
far less painfal process, than as if you make it a point of 
honour to dispute every inch of ground. 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 237 

In this present Tract I am not aware that I have as- 
sumed anything, or anything material — which a well- 
informed and ingenuous opponent can show to be disput- 
able. But it is not while following evidences, step by 
step, that the harmony of truth can be exhibited. In the 
next Tract I propose to choose my gTOund with more 
freedom — to assume the truth of that which I know to 
be true, and to employ myself in the more hopeful labour 
of setting forth those great consistencies among the 
principles and the facts of Christianity in regarding which 
its truth commands an assent which we yield cordially. 



In several places, in these pages, and as occasion 
arose, I have remanded the question of the Inspiration 
of the Scriptures, as not involved in the course of argu- 
ment which I am now pursuing. It is manifest that 
these two subjects — The historic reality of Chris- 
tianity — claiming to be — Religion given by God to man, 
and the Inspiration of the canonical books, are separable 
in a logical sense. And not only are they separable, so 
as that they may be considered and discussed irrespec- 
tively the one of the other, but they are, in my opinion, 
best kept apart — especially so when we have to do with 
those who profess Disbelief; for recent disbelief rests 
itself almost entirely upon allegations that take their 



238 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF 

force from a mistaken apprehension of the doctrine of 
Inspiration. 

But if these two questions are separable, and if they 
should be kept separate, then it is manifest that the one 
with which I have concerned myself in these pages must 
have the precedence of the one which 1 remand. It must 
be a very illogical course to infer the historic truth of 
the Gospel from the alleged inspiration of the books 
which bring it to our knowledge. To say — and to say 
it to an opponent — Christianity is true because the Gos- 
pels and Epistles are inspired books, is indeed to make 
a very unscrupulous use of the petitio principii. 

This logical sequence of the one subject as related to 
the other is quite obvious ; and scarcely less so is the 
necessity, at this present time, of establishing our posi- 
tion immovably, as Christians, upon the ground of a 
belief that is purely historic. That this may be done I 
have a perfect confidence. When it has been done such 
inferences will be seen inevitably to follow as must leave 
nothing worth the contending for on the side of Dis- 
belief. 

If Christianity be true — ^historically — its miracles in- 
cluded — and if indeed " Christ rose from the dead ac- 
cording to the Scriptures," then the writings which bring 
facts such as these to our knowledge will take a place 
of authority in our mind and conscience which, practi- 
cally, and as to their influence in determining our faith 
and our conduct, must be very nearly the same whatever 
may be the theory or the opinion we adopt (among the 
many that have been advanced) concerning Inspiration. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 239 

That these theories or opinions^ on a subject so ar- 
duous, and so important^ are all nearly on a level as to 
their intrinsic merits, I am far from professing to think ; 
but I think that among those who have already yielded 
to the force of the evidence which proves Christianity to 
be true, the grounds of difference will be continually be- 
coming more narrow, until a substantial agreement shall 
have taken place, and controversy on the subject die 
away. 

If now I may suppose myself to have to do with a 
reasonable and ingenuous opponent, I would ask such a 
one to forego the small and transient advantage which 
he may seize while he fights the doctrine of Inspiration. 
Let him deny himself any such momentery triumph, and 
manfully encounter the Mstoric argument — the alleged 
inspiration of the books not considered. I might well 
ask such an opponent to yield this point, simply because 
it is reasonable so to do ; but further I will ask it be- 
cause he who makes the request — which is in itself 
reasonable, does so in a mood which entitles him to be 
listened to. 

While earnestly wishing that the reader of these Tracts 
may forget the Writer and think only of the argument j 
I have persuaded myself that two inferences concern- 
ing him would, in a manner, whisper themselves in 
the ear of every candid reader. The first of these in- 
ferences is this — That the writer is no timid waverer 
between belief and disbelief, looking about for expedients 
whereby to effect a compromise of the controversy now 
on foot. The second inference is this. That, how decisive 



240 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

soever may be his own convictions as a Christian, he har- 
bours no ill feeling toward those to whom he opposes 
himself; and that, as well on the ground of tempera- 
mentj as of principle, he is as exempt as most men 
from religious arrogance, and as little addicted to dog- 
matism. 

As to the question of Inspiration, second in importance 
to no article of a religious man's belief — I may perhaps 
find myself emboldened hereafter to offer to the intelli- 
gent and candid reader my thoughts upon that arduous 
subject. 



The time that has elapsed since I last placed before 
you my view of the Christian Evidences has allowed 
me, not merely to reconsider my proposed line of argu- 
ment in following up what I have written, but to 
think of it as related to the shifting position of the 
contrary opinion, or as we say, of Disbelief. 

It is matter of course, if one would not be beating 
the air, that one should aim to write what is season- 
able as well as what is abstractedly and always true. 
Yet as to that heterogeneous body of opinions to 
which the term Disbelief may be applied generically, 
two or three months is a long time within which it may 
be assumed to have undergone no remarkable change. 
A year may have seen revolutions and catastrophes 
take place in the history of a mass so inorganic; and 
as to^ two years, within that compass the " Leaders of 
the public mind" may have exchanged positions, and 
several philosophies may in their turn have claimed 
submission as Positive, and have come to be for- 
gotten. 

Besides the wish to write seasonably^ I have a great 
wish to write temperately ; that is to say, with perfect 
calmness, and as mindful of the dictates of charity 

R 



242 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

toward the adverse party. Now the passage of time 
does much in calming that eagerness of the polemical 
mood which impels us at any moment to violate can- 
dour. While holding back from pen and ink for a 
year or two, one may have come so to generalise 
one's views as to the meaning of a controversy, and 
as to its destined issue as must aifect one's feelings 
towards those who, on the opposite side, are urging it 
forward. 

Although it is certain that I can never regard 
with cordial feelings those who are employing con- 
spicuous talents with unwearied zeal in the work of 
loosening the hold which salutary truths have upon 
the minds of men; nevertheless the first risings of 
instinctive resentment will have been checked when 
I have learned to think of them as the agents in a 
movement which is written in the book of fate, and 
the beneficial issue of which I see to be near at 
hand. 

The recent outburst of antagonism toward Chris- 
tianity may be contemplated by Christian men from 
opposite points of view; as for example; I might, 
with reason, as many Christian men do, look at this 
modern "Infidelity" and "Impiety" with feelings of 
dismay, disgust, and indignation, as a wanton outrage 
upon society; and I might be wrought up to a pitch 
of zeal, impelling me to make proclamation, "Who 
is on the Lord's side? — who?" and then to vent 
my, feelings in terms that cover curses. There might 
be reason in such a mood of mind as this; albeit it 



RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 243 

does not suit my Individual temperament. When, 
In so many family circles, one finds young persons of 
intelligence and moral promise, who have thrown away 
a well-established religious belief, taking in exchange 
for it a contemptible sentimentalism — a mere dream, 
that is recommended neither by logic nor manliness 
of purport; — and when one sees that these victims 
have fallen by arts of licentious sophistry; when, in 
mingling with the artizan class in manufacturing dis- 
tricts, one hears men uttering blasphemies, they 
know not how impious, which they have picked up, 
as choice morsels from out of the Sunday filth with 
which vile writers are supplying "the demand"; — 
when, beyond this, one listens to too authentic in- 
formation as to the spread of an unenglish disingenu- 
ousness among educated men who are persuading 
themselves to do on Sunday what they would scorn to 
do on any other day of the week ; — when one meets 
with persons of cultured taste who give an indulgent 
ear to any sort of shining ribaldry that may help 
them to shake ofi* the remains of a troublesome '' edu- 
cational prejudice"; — when things such as these meet 
the eye and ear on all sides, those whose own belief 
is steadfast, and who know what must be the issue of 
a national lapse into atheism, are apt to fire up, and to 
make onslaught upon the authors of so much mischief, 
and to do so in the temper of one who rushes in to 
seize an Incendiary by the shoulder. 

But these very same facts may be looked at from 
another and an opposite position. Yet in defining 

r2 



244 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

this other position some explanation is needed; for 
one may easily be misunderstood on this ground by 
nervous good folks. — A word briefly here, and more 
onward in this Tract. 

It is implied in the very theorem of Christianity, if 
it be regarded as a body of truth sent down to work its 
way in a world out of order, and if it is to offer no 
solution of the dark problems of that world, that, 
from time to time, it should evolve contrary schemes 
of belief, or theoretic antagonisms, which draw their 
life and meaning, and their intensity, out of itself. 
Heaven's own truth will not fail at epochs to bring 
the insoluble problems of this present evil world to 
press with an intolerable weight upon the minds of 
men — and usually upon the choicest minds. Those 
deep principles of mundane regeneration which Chris- 
tianity has put in movement, and which it keeps in 
movement by new impulses from age to age, often take 
effect upon single minds, and upon communities, in a 
convulsive manner, and almost with a mortal violence. 
The Gospel scheme, if submitted to analysis, might 
be shown to carry in its depths the yeast of these 
periodic fermentations. Pardon me here a jumble of 
figures. — -If this system were not immortal it must 
long ago have been devoured by its own progeny. 
A false system either could not concoct such perilous 
energies ; or if it could, would not have survived the 
first outburst of them. 

Christianity, until it has reached its next stage — 
that of acknowledged supremacy in relation to human 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 245 

affairs — cannot be imagined to live in it on any- 
other possible condition than that of passing through 
frequently recurrent seasons of deadly conflict with 
adverse principles, which, though the germs of them 
are universally diffused, are never quickened except 
when they come into collision with eternal truth. To 
this subject, momentous as it is, and too little regarded, 
I must again, in this Tract, call your attention ; for the 
present I advert to it only for the purpose of showing 
how these views affect the feeling I entertain toward 
those who now stand forward as leaders of the move- 
ment which is to issue, as they think, in the over- 
throw of all Christian Belief. 

The DISBELIEF of these last days, so far as it is 
a scheme of doctrine, may be shown to be a birth 
of Christian doctrine. The Atheism, partly, and the 
Theism, entirely, of the present time is a heresy, full 
of Christian sap. By calling it Christian^ I mean that 
it has no meaning at all except that which it has 
wrung from elements of Christian belief, brought into 
collision one with another. Atheism, in these days, 
is not, as of old, a metaphysic abstraction, or a cold 
paradox; but it is a living creatm^e, speaking with 
a loud voice, and showing a ruddy cheek, because it 
has drawn life-blood from that which can spare much, 
and yet live. If the Gospel, the destiniction of which 
is so eagerly desired by some among us, were actually 
to breathe its last, not one of the schemes of doctrine 
which is now offered to us in its stead would thence- 
forward draw another breath. Universal nonbelief, 



246 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

which is the death of the human soul toward God 
and Immortality, would instantly ensue. 

But there is no fear of the coming on of an hour 
of darkness, such as that would be. Impiety, while 
it has Christian blood in its veins, will henceforward, 
as now, start up to say its say, and to trouble our 
love of ease. It will do so because Christianity itself, 
which is now the only source of moral life in the 
world, is immortal, and will continue not only, as 
heretofore, to "satisfy her poor with bread," but to 
send out broken meat to her enemies, to the end that 
they may not starve. We shall continue, therefore, 
both to Believe, and to contend with Disbelief; but 
we shall not fall into Nonbelief. 

This course of things is not merely in a logical sense 
inevitable, but it is highly useful; it is indispensable 
if not to the conservation of the Gospel, yet to the 
restoration of its forces. Do you imagine that I can 
so think of the good Christian folks of this present 
time, as to their judgment, as to their intelligence, 
or as to their conscientious diligence, as that I could 
be willing to leave Christianity in their hands, undis- 
turbed and irresponsible? far from it. The work that 
is needed to be done, from time to time, and especially 
at this time, is of a sort which perfunctory good 
intentions will never attempt, and which conventional 
wisdom knows not how to set about. Let me here 
speak with reverence: — God will perform this work, 
and will call to it those who, as to their calling, will 
work at it in the dark. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 247 

Just In proportion as there conies upon me a 
deeper sense of the awful reality of the Christian 
scheme, and of Its bearing upon the welfare of the 
human family, now and hereafter, do I feel distrustful 
of the easy, over-weenIng, and egotistic Chrlstlanism 
of Christian people. At the Impulse of this uneasiness 
I am fain to cry out, looking across the road to the 
ranks of '' Infidels and Atheists" — '^ Friends ! come over 
and help us ; — set the house on fire, and then we shall 
shake off our Illusions, and do our duty." 

The earliest developed of the beneficial results of 
an outburst of Infidelity is this, that it compels Intelli- 
gent Christian men to look anew to the ground on 
which they stand, to sift the ''Evidences," and thus 
to regain logical possession of their religious persua- 
sion. This Is well; and so Is the second consequence 
of such a fermentation — namely, the throwing oif from 
the Christian body, as expressed in the formularies 
and the conventional style of Churches and commu- 
nions, sundry superstitions and superannuations, which 
the "Enemy" in the heat of action has snatched hold 
of and splintered, and which no one thenceforward 
will attempt to restore to their places: these relics 
are left to strew the field of battle. 

But there is a result which Is far more important 
than either of these, consequent upon a time of out- 
spoken impiety, and of which impiety Christianity, 
being, as it Is, the only truth now extant among men, 
is necessarily the object. This momentous interaction, 
partly logical, partly moral and spiritual, is of this 
kind: — 



248 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

In the course of the controversy now In progress 
a marked approximation is every day made, on both 
sides, toward that point of intersection whereat the 
two beliefs, the Christian and the Antichristian, must 
come to a final issue. In the progress of debate we 
are drawing on toward that ground — a very limited 
space, which all men see to be the area whereupon 
one question only shall remain to be determined, in 
this way, or in that. 

In a manner which is perfectly conspicuous^ and 
which no man of clear intellect can misunderstand, the 
religious controversy of this passing time is bearing 
us forward toward a single issue. The alternative, 
the only alternative now in front of the cultm^ed 
branches of the human family, is this — Christianity 
or Atheism. All lines of thought are visibly tending 
in to this point: all men who are well informed, and 
whose habits of thought are unshackled, have long 
ago come to see this, or they are coming to see it, or 
(for we should save a corner for the less robust) are 
convulsively struggling to hold themselves off from it. 

What I mean here by Christianity, is the Gospel, 
in its plenitude and its amplitude, interpreting itself 
in its own way, and speaking among men in a tone 
of authority from which there is no appeal. 

What I mean by Atheism I do not well know how 
otherwise to define than by saying that it is the pro- 
position which stands last in logical order among those 
which the human reason can put into words, intelligibly, 
concerning the universe, or the compass of phenomena, 
external and internal, with which we have to do. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 249 

One feels that this alternative, and nothing short 
of it, is near in front of us, because, on the one side, 
those many ill-judged and crazy schemes for effecting 
a compromise with infidelity, which of late have been 
propounded by intelligent Christian men, all carry upon 
them the indications of their origin in faultering belief, 
in mistaken discretion, and in confusedness of brain. 
We may be sure that no such slender devices as 
these can have power to check that mighty movement 
to which we are all of us committed, or can save us 
from its issue. On the other side — the side of Dis- 
belief—the endeavours that are making by Theists 
to pack and float a raft a-head of Niagara would be 
purely matter of ridicule, if the consequences to these 
schemers were not what they are. 

We have reached our present position after leaving 
far in the rear the ignorant ribaldiy of the Voltaire 
epoch. We have also now lately left behind us the 
erudite whim of Strauss. Strauss, by general acknow- 
ledgment, has failed in his endeavour to solve the 
historic problem of the origin of Christianity, on the 
assumption that it is false* The same thing stated 
in other words is this — That the historic and critical 
argument, on the aflSrmative side, is found to be irre- 
sistible. This is the consequence which, by his failure, 
this able writer has helped us to come to. 

K there be any means of holding off from the alter- 
native above stated, it must be sought for among those 
schemes of antichristian Theism which recommend 
themselves by a shining exterior of refiined spiritualism, 



250 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

but which, rotund as they may seem on the senti- 
mental side, will not bear to be turned over, so that 
one might look into them on the logical side. — There 
are orders in the animal world that look gay and 
beautiful — prone; but are insufferable — supine. 

Such schemes cannot avail for the purpose intended 
by their framers, because, as may easily be shown, 
recent advancements in abstract philosophy have made 
it impossible that they should any longer fence them- 
selves off, as toward their border doctrine — Pantheism, 
or the worship of the universe ; and one need not take 
much pains to prove that the boundary between 
pantheism and atheism is like the margin of twilight 
between day and night in the tropics — an ambiguity 
that is passed in ten minutes. 

Sometimes one wonders how it can be that educated 
men should endure the humiliation of putting forth, and 
of being looked to as the apostles of religious schemes, 
which can claim no fitter designation than this, that 
they are " Impiety scented and got up for the ladies," 
When with a rude breath one has blown away the 
perfumery, and with a rjithless hand has torn off the 
millinery, what remains to any of these recent 
theisms but the straw and shavings which the mass 
of men will never be persuaded to treat as anything 
better than rubbish? It will be of no avail to tell 
them that it has been the stuffing of a god. 

Truly it is not that "Natural Theology" does not 
now, as ever, rest upon its own firm foundations; or 
that, in ascertaining these foundations, we are driven 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 251 

to the shift of reasoning in a circle, alternately assum- 
ing our premises in Natural Theology, for establishing 
Christianity, and anon using Christianity in making 
good our Natural Theology: no such expedients as 
these are called for. 

But the case, as touching us at the present moment, 
is this. During a lapse of years which need not be pre- 
cisely dated, as well the abstract as the concrete theistic 
argument has insensibly moved itself forward far in 
advance of the position which some of us remember 
it to have occupied. That line of argument which 
was accepted as sufficient and conclusive in Paley's 
time, and which embraced ten thousand accumulated 
evidences of power, intelligence, and benevolent in- 
tention, drawn from the material universe, and from 
organisms, vegetable and animal, around us, is in- 
deed as valid now as heretofore, and as unassailable. 
Yet it fails to meet the enlarged intellectual require- 
ments of these times ; for this argument does not even 
furnish us with an entire Theology, and it scarcely 
opens the path towards a Theodicy; much less does 
it lay the foundation for a Worship, or give fixed 
support to an Ethical Doctrine, It wholly fails too 
to reveal a Future Life. 

On all sides, therefore, we now feel and know — and 
it is strange that our predecessors were so little con- 
scious of the fact — that, for achieving these last-named 
purposes (and unless they are achieved the argument 
is barely worth what it costs) we must go much deeper, 
and must look wider and fmiher : our evidences, to be 



252 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

conclusive against the recent Atheism, must embrace the 
entire circle of facts presented by the world of Mind, 
as well as by the world of Matter ; and we must bring 
the stress of our argument to its bearing upon those in- 
tellectual and moral realities of which the reasoners of 
past times seem to have had but a glimmering con- 
sciousness. Our Natural Theology must, as to its hold 
upon om* serious convictions, come home to the instincts 
of the real Ufe^ that is to say, the life of the soul. 

Now when we have done this — and we are driven 
to do it by the UTCsistible current of thought, as 
setting onward at this time — and when in the process 
of doing it we have recognised as true^ and have re- 
instated as authentic^ the w^hole of our emotional and 
moral instincts, its impulses, sympathies, aspirations; — 
when we have assigned a place to our irradicable hopes, 
and also to our equally irradicable misgivings and 
alarms, and have thus constructed for om'selves a 
Natural Theology worth the labouring for; — when, in 
a word, we have provided ourselves with a Theology, 
a Theopathy, a Theodicy, a Morality ; when we find 
our feet resting upon a basis of hope as men immortal, 
and also that we are standing withm range of terrors, 
as men guilty; when we find that there has reared 
itself around us an edifice within which men may be 
invited to congregate, and to pay homage to the 
Creator, Ruler, and Father, we then feel that any 
longer to repel Atheism and at the same time to dis- 
card Christianity, is impossible. We have brought 
ourselves so near touching upon the awful alternative 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 253 

above mentioned, that to hold off from it, demands 
an effort like that of one who is clinging by the 
hands to the pediment of a lofty building. 

Up to a certain point Natural Theology runs parallel 
with Christianity. Removing the forms of the argu- 
ment, and thinking of its substance; or substituting 
concrete terms for abstract terms, it is a nice matter 
to distinguish the one body of belief from the other. 
When we have trod the Theistic ground as far as it 
may be trod, Christianity is ready to collapse upon us, 
and to challenge us to surrender. And this challenge 
gets a deeper meaning at each step of our progress. 

The Deists of the time gone by seem to have been 
little conscious of difficulties which we of this time are 
groaning under. It is amazing to see in how dry, cold, 
and mechanic a style the writers of the past era. Chris- 
tian as well as antichristian, deal with those grave 
and painful subjects which touch the modem mind to 
the quick, and which well-nigh drive sensitive spirits 
to despair. A trim, academic, syllogistic, and rotund 
paragraph, indicating no genuine sympathy with human 
suffering, no anguish of soul, no mortal conflict, not 
even a man-like feeling toward our fellow-men, did 
well enough for the finish-off of an argument attempted 
for ''justifying the ways of God toward man." The 
"tenth head of discourse" in a sermon would afford 
ample space wherein to propound and to dissipate all 
reasonable doubts on questions of that order. 

But the times have changed. A new and better 
feeling has come, not upon the few only, but upon very 



254 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

many, if not the mass of minds. It is a better feeling 
(whatever it may lead to) in so far as feeling is better 
than apathy ; and as there might be a question whether 
it would not be better for a man to hang himself in 
despair, than that he should live on and die in sottish 
indifference to facts which would make him wish him- 
self out of the world, if he were but conscious of them. 

At this moment we may be quite sure that no 
scheme of religious belief will be able to hold its 
footing abroad in the world, or beyond the walls of 
closets and saloons, which does not, in some intel- 
ligible and coherent manner, make provision for 
securing our peace of mind in regard to the present 
lot, and to the prospects of the human family. 

It is on this arduous ground that the fate of the 
recent Theisms, one and all of them, is sealed. They 
will have their day, and then become as the chaff of 
the threshing-floor. Atheism offers its services by 
showing us how we may cease to feel, or to trouble 
ourselves concerning anything that does not touch our 
individual animal welfare at the passing moment. 
But it is few that can take to themselves this sort of 
comfort, brutish as it is. 

Our Theistic friends cannot do it ; and, while turn- 
ing their backs upon the Gospel, they are struggling 
at desperate odds to keep at bay the last enemy in 
the direction toward which they are looking. They 
are asking — "Why may not we^ as did our illustrious 
predecessors, stand our ground, and enjoy our philo- 
sophic religion, while we spurn your obsolete Chris- 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 265 

tianity?" ^'Tou cannot do it, because we and you, and 
all of us, have moved forward on to new ground. You 
see that the Theologians of this time do not utter, 
nor can they bring their lips to frame those heartless 
syllogisms concerning the lot of man in this world and 
the next, which passed glibly over the tongues of their 
predecessors. This fact might give you a very signifi- 
cant notice that the time is gone for ever, when the 
icy philosophy of a profligate age could be re-edited. 
The same impossibility which presses upon Christian 
Theologians at this time, must take effect in another 
manner upon yourselves, and forbid your wrapping 
yourselves in the fool's coat that fitted the broad 
shoulders of your grandsires." 

The Theists of this time might perhaps hold their 
ground if their near neighbours the Atheists, who laugh 
at them, would let them alone; but they will not let 
them alone. They have found a sort of comfort and a 
present ease in their abyss, which the Theist will never 
enjoy while he struggles to keep his head above water, 
and while he continues to look up to the sky. 

Abstract questions are necessarily the same in sub- 
stance in every age ; and any attempted solution of the 
difiiculties that attach to such questions can vary but 
little, except as to the order of the thoughts, and the 
tone and the style of the language employed by an 
individual writer. Inasmuch therefore as those stand- 
ing perplexities with which the best minds, in all times, 
have struggled, to little or no purpose, must continue 
to press upon every scheme of Philosophic Theism, 



256 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

those who, at this moment, are propounding such 
schemes ought not to think that they shall be more 
successful than their predecessors. But unless they are 
so, unless, in a very signal manner, they are more 
successful, then it is certain that the human mind is 
moving toward a ground where these ancient diflfi- 
culties will gain a tenfold force. This should be well 
understood: but the whole svibject will come in its 
proper place, if considered further on in the course 
of this argument. I have adverted to it here, simply 
for the purpose of showing with what feeling I re- 
gard those who, as antichristian men, I must speak of 
as adversaries, but who are not yet Atheists. 

In regard to the time that is near at hand, and as 
a preparation for that one last convulsion which the 
human mind must pass through, in making its choice 
between Christianity and Atheism, it is not merely 
desirable, but it is indispensable to the good issue of 
the conflict, that Antichristian Theism should first have 
exhausted all its resomxes, should have shot its best 
arrow, should have refined itself to the utmost, should 
have culminated in its own heavens — and, especially, 
that it should have given utterance, in opposition to 
Christianity, to the most extreme impieties which 
may any way be made to consist with its holding a 
position at all against Atheism. 

It may be thought that this preliminary work has 
already been accomplished. I do not think so. I 
can ima^gine something better to come than what has 
hitherto been put forth by our hostile friends — the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 257 

anti-christlan anti-atheists. As yet, what we have had 
before us has borne the manifest indication of being 
the product either of minds unstable, impulsive, and 
perturbed, and ill content with their own holdings 
(which they cannot hold to) or of such as are flippant, 
self-seeking, ambitious, and coldly vain — minds that to 
win a clap, would not scruple to sink a continent. I 
can hardly imagine that Antichristian Theism has in- 
deed completed its destined work while it is repre- 
sented by writers who show no such seriousness or 
honesty of purpose as would lead them fairly to meet 
the point of the problem as to the origin of Christi- 
anity, and to scorn transparent sophisms which can 
serve a turn only among the uninformed and un- 
thinking — the consumers of "railway literature." 

Especially we want to see what can be done in 
making good a scheme of anti-christian anti-atheism, 
by men who have that modesty and self-respect 
which inspires respect for an opponent. On this 
ground the entire class of modern infidel writers is 
miserably at fault. Christianity, keeping its hold, as 
it does, of the profound convictions of men who are 
as highly cultured as any men, and who are as robust 
in mind as any, and as fearlessly honest as any, it is 
an ill symptom when a set of writers constantly afifects 
an innocent ignorance of any such fact, and are always 
showing off their condescension toward the obtuse super- 
stitions that are prevalent in these ''middle ages." 

I am apt to think that this affectation must nearly 
have worn itself out by this time, and that men who 

s 



268 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

will be ashamed of it are yet to come forward on 
the same side — if indeed anything further remains to 
be advanced on that side. 

Meantime I harbour no animosity toward the writers, 
such as they are, with whom a Christian w^riter has 
to do. I am heartily glad, for myself, that I am not 
doing their work — although, alas ! it must be done 
by somebody. Toward some who manifestly have 
known, as I have known, the pains of saddened medi- 
tation, my feelings are those of profound sympathy. 
As to the flippant and the ambitious, it is easy to 
forget them. As to one or two who, in a fit of moral 
hallucination, have uttered revolting blasphemies, I 
leave them in the hands of Him whom they revile, 
and who once carried charitable hope to its utmost 
boundary when He said, '' They know not what they 
do." 



If it be seriously-minded and sincere men that are 
to be addressed, then it may be demanded of them 
that the Gospel should be listened to on the suppo- 
sition that it is true : and then, let it be proved to be 
false, if that can be done. 

And yet though I append this last condition, I 
must not be so misunderstood as if I could imagine 
this to be possible. Any such assumption I hold to be 
monstrous; and even to this hypothetic statement we 
can attach no meaning so long as we respect the 
laws of evidence, and the principles of human nature. 
But the Christian argument must be left to follow 
in that course which is proper to the exposition, to 
the due conveyance, and to the demonstration of any 
other, and of every other system of proof in which 
premises are assumed, legitimate conclusions arrived at, 
difficulties cleared up, and counter-suppositions shown 
to be untenable or futile. 

Whoever charges himself with such a task as that 
of conveying to the intelligence and reason of others 
a system or body of truth — of whatever kind — must 
be understood to have come upon his ground in some 
such manner as this: that is to say — he professes to 

S2 



260 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

understand the subject of which he is to treat; and 
those to whom he speaks must believe that he does 
understand it, and that he is familiar with all parts 
of it, including its most difficult problems. They must 
listen to him on the belief that what he affirms to be 
true, he knows to be demonstrable ; and they must 
believe too that he is prepared, at the last, to meet 
and remove all reasonable objections. 

There is nothing in the circle of philosophy, of 
criticism, of history, or of physical science, that can 
fairly be set forth and established, unless, formally or 
virtually, as much as this is postulated on the one 
side, and is cheerfully allowed on the other. 

From this point onward, therefore, dropping a peti- 
tionary tone, and abstaining from those interlinear 
circmnlocutions which spring from the consciousness 
of having to encounter a perpetual gainsaying and 
hostile contradiction, I am to speak in the undisturbed 
confidence that my position is good; and that it is 
impregnable. 

From the acts and discourses of Christ, and, not 
least, from the occult meaning of several of his para- 
bles, we gather, with more or less distinctness, that 
his mission, as toward the human family, had, in his 
own view of it. Three Purposes, each of which is, to 
a great extent, irrespective of the other two, and 
which, although they are not in fact disjoined, are yet 
susceptible of interpretation, when taken apart. The 
supernatural element of the Christian system — or that 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 261 

body of miracles which is recorded by the four Evan- 
gelists — has a meaning which is peculiar in relation 
to each of these three purposes, considered indepen- 
dently of the others; and in relation to each, and to 
the entire scheme of which his ministry on earth was 
the visible act, the miracles alleged to have been 
wrought by him, in the course of it, are neither the 
beginning, nor the end, nor the substance of that 
scheme; and although they are inseparable from it, 
they are adjunctive, and, in a sense, are incidental 
to it. 

The supernatural element of this system, although 
adjunctive, holds its position within it, unchanged by 
the lapse of ages. If we have come to think of the 
miracles of the evangelic history — supposing the entire 
truth of the record — as events which long ago have 
come to their end, as to their intention, and which 
are now receding from our view, and are fading away 
in the haze of a remote antiquity ;— if we thus think, 
we misapprehend (so I believe) the purport of the 
Gospel, and lose sight of its perennial vitality. This 
I shall endeavour to shew. 

The three purposes embraced in the Mission of 
Christ, as sent of God to bring about the wellbeing 
of the human family, or to open a door of hope to 
all its tribes, are these three. — 

First we gather from Christ's incidental expres- 
sions, and from the purport of some of his parables, 
this assumption — That he knew himself to have ap- 
peared in the world to bring about, by means of 



262 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

principles which he originated, or which he authen- 
ticated, a Secular Keformation; that is to say, a 
purification, a rectification, and an ennobUng of man's 
life, individually and socially, as related to this pre- 
sent course of things — even that life individual of which 
death is the termination, and that life social which 
matures Itself In races — expires with them, and renews 
itself In other and remote regions. 

Christ, the Eeformer and Philanthropist, was to 
bring about this purpose of his mission just so far 
as it could. In Its nature, be brought about, by means 
that are purely suasive; or, as we say, by moral 
Influences, apart from the auxiliary concomitance of 
visible and political Institutions, and of secular power, 
or the setting up of an empire. 

As to the second of these three purposes of Christ's 
mission and ministry, a far more explicit reference Is 
made to It by himself than to either the first or to 
the third. In truth It so stands out In his discourses, 
and It so presents itself In his apologues, as might lead 
us to suppose that it was the ruling purpose of his life, 
and the reason of his sufferings and death, and that 
which, when he had made it sure by his resurrection, 
became the complement of joy In the forethought of 
which he had endured the cross and despised its 
ignominy. This, the second and the prominent purpose 
of Christ's mission, was the rescue of a gathering — call 
it, If you will, an election — from out of the million 
millions of the human family, and the conferring upon 
these — whom he calls "his own" — the life divine, the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 263 

life Immortal — even a new and imperishable existence, 
of which his own human immortality was to be at 
once the type and the pledge. 

On this ground I am not writing as a theologian, 
or as a disputant on one side of an antiquated contro- 
versy. I know nothing about systems of divinity, 
nothing about confessions of faith, nothing about articles 
of religion. 

What I have to do with, and the only things that 
come within my field of vision, are these: — on the 
one hand, Christ's own professions — distinct and un- 
ambiguous as they are; and on the other hand, that 
matter of fact which, conspicuously, has attached to, 
and has characterized, the course of events in all ages 
and countries when and where the Gospel has, in any 
measure, developed its energies. 

The accomplishment of this second purpose, as of 
the first, was to Involve such means only as are purely 
suasive — moral and spiritual, that Is to say as distin- 
guished from such as are visible, political, and mun- 
dane. But then, more than this, it implies the presence 
of a spiritual energy, going beyond the suasive force 
of moral principles, or of audible teaching, and which 
takes effect in each instance in a manner that Is inscru- 
table, that is Infallible, and that is analogous to those 
acts of the Creative will which at the first filled the 
universe with life, and which is now and always doing 
the same. 

As to the THIRD of those purposes which we as- 
sume to have been Included in the mission of Christ, 



264 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

inasmuch as it is more occult than the first, and far 
more so than the second, and as it touches the circle 
of human duties and sentiments only in an indirect 
manner, so is it very parsimoniously alluded to in his 
discourses, and if anywhere affirmed didactically, the 
conveyance is made in symbolic terms. 

Brevity and indistinctness, in this instance, is what 
we should look for, as proper in one who in truth is 
what he professes himself to be. The Enthusiast or 
pretender would either have made no such challenge, 
or if he had made it, would have blazoned it in 
hyperbolic style. 

Gathering up with care from Christ's incidental 
utterances, and from his apologues, the less obvious 
import of certain passages, we infer that he professes 
himself to have entered upon the stage of the world, 
on the part of the Almighty — its Rightful Lord, to 
deliver the human family from under the hand of a 
lawless Usurper — to restore truth and order — to over- 
throw the tyranny, and to bind and expel the Tyrant ; 
and having done so — ^to " lead captivity captive." 

The accomplishment of this third purpose of Christ's 
advent involves or supposes on his part, an absolute 
lordship over all human spirits (willing and unwilling) 
a control of all destinies — present and future ; to wit — 
the weal and the woe of the Living and of the Dead — 
for Christ is Sovereign and Judge: he is King of 
Hades, and Master also of every spiritual race, as well 
the loyal as the rebellious. 

The accomplishment of this ulterior purpose of 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 265 

Christ's mission, and the achievement of this conquest, 
is to be brought about — so we infer^ — in such a manner, 
and by such means only^ as shall at once demonstrate, 
and shall signalize, in the view of all, the intrinsic 
FORCE of Goodness, Truth, Rectitude, when, on even 
ground, these immortal energies are matched against 
wickedness, with its falsities, its subterfuges, its ever- 
blundering intelligence — its own sophisms — and its own 
malignant devices. This superiority of Good in its 
conflict with Evil is to be exhibited under conditions 
as favourable as may be to the party that is in the 
end to be discomfited. 

In thus sketching the outline of the argument which 
I intend to pursue throughout this Tract, I profess it 
to be my intention to show that the series of miracles 
recorded by the Evangelists, consummated as they 
were by the miracle of Christ's resurrection, occupy 
a place of perpetual efficacy in relation, separately, to 
each of the three abovenamed purposes of his mission, 
as Saviour of the world, in a secular sense, as Re- 
deemer of his people, and as Conqueror in the world 
of spirits. 

This series of supernatural events is, as I think, 
altogether misunderstood as to its purport, when it 
is imagined to have been an interposition requisite 
for launching a New Religion in the world — and for 
giving it an initial impulse; but which, now that the 
Gospel has got its footing among the nations, has out- 
lived its purpose, and may, not only safely but con- 



266 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

venlently, and with advantage, be suffered to fall out 
of notice and to be forgotten. 

Any such supposition as this — entertained as it 
seems to be by some who profess themselves Chris- 
tians — is, in my opinion, an error which is the fruit of 
modes of thinking that are shallow and nugatory. 



THE FIEST INTENTION OF CHEIST'S MISSION, AS 
ATTESTED BY MIKACLES. 



We have said that Christ has entered upon the 
platform of the human system — even of this secular 
course of things — embracing the wellbeing of men 
singly, and the welfare and progress of communities, 
with the purpose of effecting thereupon a gradual, but 
extensive and deep-working regeneration. As Bene- 
factor of those whose ordinary term of existence is 
three score years and ten, and as the Reformer of 
communities and nations which, although they have 
longevity, have no after life. He gains a hearing for 
principles the vitality of which is such that they ger- 
minate in the most rugged soils, and spring up and 
bear fruit and scatter their seeds under the most in- 
clement skies. 

These principles, contrary as they are to the selfish 
impulses and to the ingrain desires of human nature, 
are sought after for the very purpose of expelling, 
and of utterly putting them out of the way of inter- 
ference with the better-loved interests of the day and 
hour. Yet they live; and from time to time they 



268 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

come forth with a fresh energy, even as at the first: 
nay, with more energy than at the first; because, in 
each successive impact upon the human system, they 
fall upon a mass which themselves have brought into 
a condition favourable to the impression that is next 
to be made upon it* 

It would seem to be a matter of course, at this 
point, to specify those ethical principles, or as we 
might call them, those edicts of the Christian system, 
which are its characteristics, and which, so far as they 
take efiect upon the course of aifairs in this present 
life, do so, by universal acknowledgment, in the right 
direction; that is to say, in the giving force to every 
dictate of justice, humanity, self-denial, temperance, 
and purity. But it is superfluous to introduce any 
such specifications, for we are saved this labour by 
those who, wishing to disparage Christianity, are wont 
to say that, as to his ethical principles, Jesus of Naza- 
reth has advanced nothing but what had been already 
said, and in a better manner, by the great writers af 
antiquity; or even by Jewish teachers and Chinese 
philosophers. K this be so, then, on all hands, it is 
agreed that the morality of the Gospel is coincident 
with principles held and professed by the leading 
minds of the most cultured races. This is enough; 
or if anything more were affirmed it would be in such 
terms as these, it would be said — "We do not need 
Christianity as a system of morals; for we all know 
and feel whatever is good — ^whatever is simply of an 
ethical quality, in the Gospels and the Epistles." This 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 269 

then is enough; and it hence appears that Christ, as 
the Reformer of the human system in its secular 
aspect, takes up and authenticates those well-understood 
principles which as soon as they are heard approve 
themselves to the consciences of men, and which the 
sages of all times have recognized and taught. This 
is as it should be, and on this ground, it appears, there 
is no controversy. 

That the teaching of an ethical Reformer should 
be consentaneous with the better feelings and con- 
victions of men, as embodied in the sayings and 
teachings of minds of the highest order, is what we 
should look for as the first requirement in one who 
comes forward to regenerate a world that has fallen 
into disorder. 

The SECOND requirement in the qualifications of 
such a Reformer is this — that, in giving expression 
to these dictates of universal morality, he shall use 
categorical foraas, and not such as are conditional or 
logical. His style is this — "I say unto you" — and 
'' this is my commandment." But then the necessary 
adjunct of an authoritative tone, such as this, is — the 
affording evidence that it has been rightfully assumed. 

It has been usual, on the part of Christian advo- 
cates, to say, that Christ sets a bold foot upon the 
ground of the world, as if proprietor of the soil, and 
that he issues laws, as Master, not maxims as a sage. 
In no case does he ask leave to be listened to, or 
aim to conciliate attention. Love is in his demeanour 
and in every act of his life; but stern law is on his 



270 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

lips, and it is at our peril that we turn away the ear 
from him who speaks as none but the " one Lawgiver" 
may speak. 

Christ, as founder of a system of mundane Ethics, 
revises and overrules all bygone moralities, issuing 
anew whatever is of unchangeable obligation, and con- 
signing to non-observance or oblivion whatever had 
a temporary force, or a local reason. With a touch — 
with a word — a word full of far-reaching inferences, 
he rules the ages to come; and he so sends morality 
forward — he so launches it into the boundless futurity 
of the human system on earth, as that it shall need 
no redressing, no complementing, no retrenchment, even 
in the most distant era. 

This is done, not by systematic codification, but by 
the characteristic practice of instancing at the critical 
points, and wherever an ambiguity is to be excluded. 
Beauty of contour, in the human form, is secured by 
the ligaments at the joints, and by adhesions of the in- 
teguments to the bony structure at places. It is so 
that, in Christ's apothegms, in his apologues, and in 
his pointed replies to sophistical questions, he imparts 
a divine symmetry and majesty to his body of laws. — 
Christ's law wears the grace of Heaven, though it be 
firmly knit together as law must be if it is to hold 
a place in a world such as this. 

Is then Christ's morality a good morality as related 
to the wellbeing of men in this present life ? You find 
fault with it — raising objections on this or that ground. 
But your individual judgment can have little signi- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 271 

ficance nor cany much weight m this instance ; for an 
appeal may be made from your frigid and captious 
criticism to the judgment of mankind. It is true that 
we all of us kick at Christ's law, and resent it, in our 
worse moods of mind; but we all give in to it and 
approve it, in our better moods. We defend ourselves 
against its application to ourselves, and we look about 
for pleas and grounds of exception whenever it stands 
upon the pathway of our selfish or sensual desires; 
but we are prompt to wish that we could arm this 
same law with thunder when another's selfishness or 
his passions threaten our peace or property. 

In tiae course of those convulsions and upheavings 
which the civilized western nations have passed through, 
in the lapse of centuries, Christ's morality has still 
floated uppermost, and has held its position in the 
opinion of nations, as being better than any other 
morality with which it might be compared. In the 
social condition of communities those things which rend 
the heart of the philanthropist, and which perplex the 
statesman, are those in which Christ's law has been set 
at naught, and in which, if it were applied to them, 
sufferings would be mitigated — oppressions would wear 
themselves out, or be renounced immediately; and so 
the problem which baffles legislation would resolve 
itself as if by spontaneous sublimation. Christ's law, 
taking effect as the principle of social wellbeing, 
underlays legislation by the substitution of deeper 
motives for motives that are shallow; and it overlays 
legislation by establishing conventional proprieties of 



272 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

behaviour, and by diflfusing a refinement and a sensi- 
tiveness, as to conduct, which have the efifect of 
banishing enactments and penalties from the thoughts 
of men, in the ordinary routine of domestic and public 
life. Let Christ's law come into its position, first as 
a fixed principle, and then as a suffused influence, 
and thenceforward legislation would retire within its 
limits as a needful authority in the defining of those 
reciprocative interests and functions which are indif- 
ferent, as to morality. 

We are so used to think of Christianity as a 
Eeligion, related to the invisible and fixture life — 
which doubtless is its essential character, that it de- 
mands an effort of abstraction to think of it merely 
as a mundane, or secular religion, sustaining itself 
indeed upon beliefs concerning the invisible and the 
future, yet achieving an end which does not in fact 
stretch out beyond the present life. 

If Christianity be not from Heaven in the sense 
in which it claims to have come thence, then Its author 
individually, is entitled to the immeasurable glory of 
having devised and put upon a course of continuous 
vitality a mundane religion which, for power, and 
for the intimate hold it takes upon the deepest prin- 
ciples of human nature, is, when set beside the ancient 
theisms, what the summer's sun is as compared with 
an arctic aurora. 

Let us then take it so at least as far as a page 
onward In this Tract, that Christianity is the product 
of a human mind — a benevolent mind — intending to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 273 

benefit mankind, and projecting the means of driving 
ofi" the vicious polytheism of the nations, and aiming 
to substitute an efficient belief for the inefficient ab- 
stractions of Eastern and Grecian sages. 

This intention supposed, then the author of Chris- 
tianity did these things following: — First, he brought 
the Infinite and Supreme Being — the Creator and 
Ruler of the world, clearly and prominently out from 
the haze and the ambiguities of abstract or meta- 
physical speculation. Theism had laboured to do this 
— it had yearned to do it — it had laboured and had 
yearned on this ground to give some contentment to 
the sorrowful longings of the human breast, and to 
find and furnish a balm for its woes ; and also to skreen 
from horrors the terrified imagination of guilty man. 
Very slender success had attended any of these earnest 
endeavours. The crowd of men was in fact sent back 
from the walks of philosophy, and they were told to 
procure for themselves what help they might, at the 
hands of priests, and in frequenting altars and in be- 
sieging shrines. 

Christ, and we now think of him as the author of 
a secular religion, effected his purpose by bringing 
men into immediate contact with a well-defined con- 
ception of a Personal Being, infinite, incomprehensible, 
and yet near to each human spirit — to each spirit 
a Father, "seeing in secret," and accessible by prayer. 
It was this vivid revelation — call it now a merely 
human conception, which by its splendour put out the 
flickering candle of philosophy, and which by its force 



274 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

overthrew altars, and sent gods and goddesses to 
seek a home in the waste places of the earth ; or, if 
not so, they were left to shrink back into their own 
marbles; or they vanished from the real world, and 
were to be found only in the books that are now the 
portion of schoolboys. 

If Christianity be a religion for this present life, 
then it takes possession of the human spirit precisely 
at those points of contact whereat a religion first makes 
its entrance, and which are the very last holding- 
places of religious feeling with men who are throwing 
off their belief. — That is to say — the consciousness of 
guilt — the consciousness of weakness, and the experi- 
ence of suffering, impelling us, whether we will or 
not, to believe in the speciality of the Providential 
government of the world, and to trust in, and to use 
the instrument of prayer, as a real and present means 
of obtaining deliverance — relief — solace. It is quite 
true that there is a class of sophistically constituted, 
or of sophisticated and debauched minds, that do suc- 
ceed in reasoning themselves out of these instinctive 
beliefs :— there are men who, with a suicidal wanton- 
ness, having applied logical scissors to the nerves of 
the moral life, do, and may, with truth declare that 
they are conscious of no impulse leading them to look 
to the supreme power or mercy. 

So it may be with the exceptive few; but so it 
is not, nor ever has been, with human nature, taken 
at large. Man and woman in this their season of 
hope and fear, of changeful weal and woe ; — man, while 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 275 

he carries in his bosom a conscience, and while he is 
liable to a thousand ills, must have a religion. 

In giving men a religion, Christ, the Saviour of 
the world, does not recognize, as if they deserved re- 
futation, any of those sophisms that contradict our belief 
in Providence, and that would silence prayer, as if it 
could be of no avail: on the contrary, he gives pro- 
minence, in the most distinct and emphatic manner, to 
these three principles, which in truth might be regarded 
as the characteristics of his system, namely — That there 
is forgiveness of sins with God — That the welfare of 
the individual man is watched over and provided for 
by God our heavenly Father, even in relation to the 
smallest of its elements; and That "the Father of spirits" 
hears prayer, and yields Mmself to it^ and that He is 
accessible to importunity. These are the constituents of 
a Belief such as men have need of in this present life. 

When, as now, we are thinking of Christianity as 
an earth-born and a secular religion, then, without in- 
stituting inquiry as to the truth of its doctrine con- 
cerning a future life (which inquiry can be pertinent 
only when we regard it as heaven-descended) we are 
bound to take account of those main elements of the 
scheme — the promise and the threat of a world to come 
— even a retributive immortality. 

The way in which this promise and this threat are 
propounded, and then the mode of balancing both with 
the instinctive sense of justice, in the human mind, 
demand to be noticed; for these adjustments have a 
deep meaning, and have been too little regarded. 

t2 



276 THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

The future retributive life — the alternative of ab- 
solute weal, or woe, and each of these carrying with 
it the momentum of a boundless duration — how have 
these fearful conceptions been employed by the Author 
of the Christian system? — an awful Eternity, brought 
to bear upon a mundane religious institute ! and may we 
not use this word, awful^ as a fit adjunct not merely of 
the threat, but even of the promise ? In truth can we 
look onwards to an endless existence as our destiny, 
under any condition, and not tremble? — or can this in- 
stinctive fear be easily exempted from feelings of dismay? 

The word Eternity must here be accepted in its 
popular sense ; for assuredly any terms or phrases that 
are used in conveying to mankind at large a secular 
religion, must be understood to bear none other than 
a popular or ordinary interpretation. Whatever those 
exceptions may be to which the more mature criticism 
of a future time may give support, or whatever the 
qualifications which a future biblical induction may 
introduce, there will ever stand before Christianized 
nations, in the teaching of Christ, an absolute alter- 
native, as awaiting those of the human family that 
have come within its influence ; that is to say, a state 
of permanent wellbeing, or a condition of irretrievable 
suff'ering and damage in the future life; and this as 
the consequence of our behaviour in this life, or of 
our moral and spiritual condition when we leave it. 

Those who have had much practical concernment 
with human nature, such as it is, and who understand 
the instability of the moral principle in the minds of 



THE EESTOEATTON OF BELIEF. 277 

men and women, such as they are, will be ready to 
grant that no presentment of the future life which 
should be ambiguous, or which should be otherwise 
than absolute^ on this side, or on that, would be likely 
to take any effect at all upon the mass of minds. 
The supposition of a future state which should have 
no boundary between a condition absolutely good, and 
the contrary, would be snatched at as eligible on all 
those perilous occasions when the imperious commands 
of the sensuous and selfish life are balancing against 
the vague and remote good of the life future. To 
give force to motives acting under this disadvantage, 
they must carry with them this idea of fixedness^ as 
belonging to the future retributive state. 

But now it is certain that among those moral in- 
tuitions which are the hopeful distinction of human 
nature, there is a profound sense of fitness, order, and 
justice, which demands a doctrine of quite another sort, 
as requisite for securing the equilibrium of the mind; 
and especially of minds the most sensitive toward what- 
ever is good and true. Accordingly provision is made 
in the Christian scheme for meeting and for satisfying 
this moral necessity. 

This is done distinctly and boldly in the teaching 
of Christ, when, in various modes, he gives expression 
to the doctrine of an exactly adjusted, and an evenly 
meted out retribution — premium and penalty — such as 
shall fall short in nothing of a balance-keeping re- 
compense of good deeds, on the one hand, and a 
punishment, or an exacting of pains, on the other; 



278 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

even such a retribution as shall approve itself to all 
well-constituted minds; — only that on this side, con- 
siderations of ignorance or disadvantage shall be 
admitted to mitigate, or to overrule the reckoning. 

This doctrine stands before us, on the one hand, 
quite as sharply defined as does the other doctrine 
on the other hand; and it is this last-named principle 
that meets and satisfies those instinctive notions of 
even-handed justice — of strict impartiality — of fitness 
— order — truth, which (except where a debauching 
sophistry has paralysed the moral nature) take effect 
in every human breast, and form a groundwork upon 
which conscience lodges itself, and on which it rests 
its leverage. 

But now do we not discern an incongruity in these 
two beliefs? does not the one doctrine cut across the 
path of the other, and seem to contradict, or to dislodge 
it ? Logic-loving theologians have always seen, or have 
believed that they saw, this contrariety; and to meet 
the difficulty they have rejected, or evaded, or ignored 
the one or the other of these prime elements of the 
Christian ethics. Just here has been the reef upon 
the sharp ridges of which systems of Theology have 
lodged themselves among the breakers. Systems, such 
as might show themselves with credit in colleges, and 
might be shaped into symmetry by scientific manipu- 
lation, must of course profess to be able to steer clear 
of these rocks, on either hand. Meantime humble- 
minded, diligent, intelligent, and non-logical readers 
of Christ's discourses and parables, instead of being 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 279 

troubled by the consciousness of any such incongruity — 
instead of finding his teaching to be incoherent, find 
in it the rest of their spirits — find the principle of a 
genuine harmony, or moral rest. On the one hand 
the prospect of an absolute and irreversible alternative 
of happiness or woe takes effect, with unutterable force, 
upon the religious instincts, giving power and intensity 
to the religious life. On the other hand, the counter 
doctiine, which is not less distinctly set out to view, 
meets the requirements of a healthy reason, and of 
a conscience sensitive, well informed, and exercised 
among and upon the duties and trials of real life. 

But why does not Christ, the Teacher, himself fill 
up the chasm in his religious system? why does he 
not show us how two announcements, so dissimilar in 
their apparent meaning, may be brought into unison? 
Did he not foresee the off*ence which the logical reason 
would here stumble at? As human teacher, or sage, 
he would no doubt have foreseen the difficulty, and 
in some way would have secured his scheme against 
objection at this point. But he does not do this, even 
by a word. 

If we should be willing to think of Christ as more 
than a sage, then we may readily supply ourselves with 
an explanation of the omission, as thus. — We may sup- 
pose, either that the mode in which the two principles 
shall take eff'ect in the future life may be such as 
could not be intelligibly presented to the human mind 
in its present stage ; — or that, even if this might be 
done, such a revelation must embrace more than could 



280 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

now be set before us for our good. So long therefore 
as Christ the Teacher of morals is listened to by man- 
kind, the two doctrines, each carrying all the force 
that belongs to it apart from the other, will continue 
to bear upon religious minds, and will preserve such 
m a state of moral acquiescence. 

We have spoken of Christ's doctrine of a future 
life, and now are thinking of its threatening aspect, as 
a constituent of a religion supposed to have sprung 
from a human mind, and to have been contrived for 
effecting purposes that relate to this present life only. 
Thus regarded, I have said, the terms in which this doc- 
trine is conveyed must be accepted in their obvious 
and popular sense. But yet, when they are taken in this 
sense, they carry a meaning from the pressure of which 
we are driven to seek relief — if it may be had, in 
criticism ; — or if not so, in some mitigating hypothesis ; 
or if this will not help us, then we are tempted to re- 
ject Christianity on this very score. There is however 
another source of help under the intensity of this weight, 
which it is easy to foresee is likely to unfold itself in 
the course of an improved biblical method; and it is 
of this sort. — 

— Already biblical criticism has reached a stage 
immeasurably in advance of the position which it oc- 
cupied only a few years ago ; and perhaps we ought 
not now to be exacting much more of it than it has 
actually accomplished. Yet there is a movement for- 
ward which is not merely desirable, nor merely possible, 
but almost certain to come about. This is a thorough 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 281 

and absolute emancipation of biblical interpretation 
from the trammels that have hitherto been imposed 
upon it by our polemical theologies. When once this 
liberation has been effected, the utterances of Scrip- 
ture will have room to take a new hold of the human 
mind — accepted as true in their simplest meaning ; and 
then a genuine counterpoising of moral and spiritual 
principles will freely develope itself in a manner 
that shall give rest to the heart, whether or not 
a systematic coherence can be secured for scientific 
theology. 

Let us apply this supposition to the case before us. 
Why has not Christ's teaching concerning an im- 
partial and rigorous future retribution, touching all 
men, hitherto taken the prominent place which of 
right belongs to it in our theologies? Why? be- 
cause we could not allow it to come into any such 
position without risk to the coimter-doctrine of an ab- 
solute alternative of good or evil; or without giving 
an advantage they would snatch at, to our antagonists, 
on the right hand, and on the left. 

But let the time come when all such sinister influ- 
ences shall be discarded with the contempt they deserve, 
and when all such dotard fears shall be dispelled by 
a salutary fear lest we personally be found flattering 
ourselves among fatal delusions; and then, this potent 
Christian element, working its way into the inert core 
of our now relaxed Christianism— touching and wound- 
ing our fond conceit of individual impunity — breaking 
in upon the dreams of self-love, and discharging its 



282 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

anodynes; and then a healthful, and a health-giving 
apprehension, of which our own individual moral con- 
dition, and not the fate of other men, will be the ob- 
ject, dissipates, we know not how or why, the morbid 
moodiness which had so often sent us on a bootless 
search after some hitherto mithought-of and softened 
etymology of the aLcovto<; of our Greek Testament. 

Besides, this same style of faithful dealing with our- 
selves — an alarmed conscience holding a candle as 
often as we read our Bibles — will bring before us in 
distinct outline, the truth that, in its application to the 
millions around us — even to the imprivileged and 
the imtaught millions of our brethren, a fearless in- 
terpretation of Christ's doctrine concerning the im- 
partial future retribution, avails immensely more in the 
clearing up of the difficulties that have saddened our 
meditative hours, than does, or than can, any imagin- 
able novelty of interpretation, even the most lax that 
should be put upon an obnoxious phrase in the Gospels. 

It has been usual to think of Christ's announce- 
ments of future punishment in relation to their direct 
bearing upon morals; and the question is asked how 
far this may have operated as a restraint upon the 
passions of men. On this ground appeals have been 
made to facts, in support of opposite conclusions* 
With this much-worn question I have nothing now 
to do, nor am inclined to advance an uncalled-for 
opinion upon it. But there is a permanent and a 
very extensive product of those awful declarations, 
which, though it be not obvious, and though it has 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF, 283 

seldom been adverted to, is of unquestionable reality, 
and may be traced in its operation upon every page 
of religious history. As often as we are comparing 
the ancient mind with the modem mind, and notice 
the characteristics of the two very dissimilar moods 
of the same human nature, this influence is recog- 
nizable. 

To this subject I have already adverted more than 
once in these Tracts (as at pp. 74 and 84), and shall 
now only bring it to its place in relation to my im- 
mediate purpose. 

The ancient civilization, with all Its great and shining 
qualities — qualities which have secured for it an im- 
mortal glory, though not a perpetuity in fact, wanted 
that which places our modern civilization upon a far 
more solid basis, and which is the reason at once of 
its perpetuity and of its progression. 

In the social system of cultured antiquity there 
was wanting an element of some kind — nor did it ap- 
pear whence it could be drawn — which should confer 
upon the individual man, and upon woman also, a 
ground of self-esteem that should be exempt from ar- 
rogance : — there was needed too in every man, a reason 
for respecting and promoting the welfare of other men 
which should stand good irrespectively of any estimate 
of their individual merits: there was wanting some 
principle, or impulse of personal courage and fortitudej 
which should be available for the feeble as well as 
for the strong, and which should arm the individual 
man, without making him pugnacious, and make him 



284 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

unconquerable without making him sullen : — there was 
wanting in the ancient mind, a motive so solid as 
that the loftiest virtues might rear themselves upon it 
as a basis, and yet show no contempt of others : there 
was wanting a ground of humility exempt from abject- 
ness, and of grandeur of soul exempt from pride. 

Christ, the Saviour of men as to this present life, 
has supplied this want in an effective manner ; — for he 
has planted in the hearts of those who trust him as a 
teacher sent from God, a hope and a fear which sur- 
mounts, and which out-measures every other hope, and 
w^hich expels every other fear; — a fear too which gives 
an irresistible prompting to courage, and which sustains 
even the pusillanimous in a course of behaviour which 
the noblest spirits, without it, can barely emulate. 

That dozen of men, ignobly born as they were, 
which followed Jesus in his circuits through Galilee 
and Judea, fondly dreamed of palaces and prince- 
doms which soon were to be their own, when in truth, 
they were about to be sent forth upon a course of 
suffering intensely severe. It was needful to arm 
them for this unlooked conflict, and this requisite 
preparation, as it included powerful motives of the 
happiest complexion, so did it embrace a dread so deep 
that it should be proof against the extremest wrench 
of bodily anguish. On the one hand, this Teacher of 
men had said — " Fear not, little flock, for it is your 
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom:" — 
but on the other hand he had said, even to these his 
^ frieiids' — " Fear not them which can kill the body, 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 285 

and after that have nothing more that they can do. 
But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear; — fear 
him which hath power, after he hath killed, to cast 
into Gehenna ; yea, I say unto you, fear him." And 
what was this Gehenna? — it was the place where, ac- 
cording to the same Teacher, " their fire is not quenched, 
and where their worm dieth not." 

Now we of this age may expound as we think 
fit these appalling words; or may extenuate these 
phrases ; — or, if we please, let us cast away the whole 
doctrine as intolerable and incredible. — Let us do so ; 
but it is a matter of history, out of question, that 
the apostolic Church, and the Church of later times, 
took it, word for word, in the whole of its apparent 
value. It is true that several attempts were made to 
substantiate a mitigated sense ; but it is certain that 
the language of Christ, in regard to the future life, 
was constantly on the lips of martyrs, throughout 
the suffering centuries. Often and often was it heard 
issuing from out of the midst of the fire, and was 
lisped by the quivering lips of women and children 
while writhing on the rack. 

These were the actual fruits of Christ's stem doctrine 
of the " wrath to come," and by such means as these 
was it that the world was at length cleansed of the 
pest of licentious gods and goddesses. But there were 
other and later fruits of the same belief which have 
been not of less moment, albeit less direct, and less 
conspicuous. 

An unclouded belief concerning the future life, with 



286 THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 

its awful alternative of endless good or ill- — a belief 
of inheriting a bright immortality by favour, not by 
merit — a belief of individual relationship to the Infinite 
and Eternal Being — a commingled or aggregate persua- 
sion of this sort solves the problem that has been stated 
above; for it supplies to the individual man — and 
woman too — and child — it supplies a ground of self- 
esteem that is exempt from arrogance ; — it furnishes a 
constant reason for respecting the welfare of others, 
standing good irrespectively of their individual merit ; 
it conveys to the heart an impulse of personal courage, 
and of fortitude, available by the feeble as well as 
by the strong: it arms the individual man without 
making him pugnacious ; — it renders him proof against 
despotism, but it does not make him sullen. This 
aggregate belief — the fruit of Christ's teaching — yields 
to the mind and to the heart, a basis upon which the 
loftiest virtues may rear themselves, without showing 
contempt toward others; and it supplies a ground of 
humility free from abjectness, and of greatness exempt 
from pride. 

The ancient civilization, compared with the modem, 
that is to say, the civilization of the people of Western 
Europe, offers to the eye the prominent difference that 
results from the position of woman — her personal purity, 
and dignity, and her consequent influence in society, 
generally, and in the domestic circle, specially. Now 
it ought not to be affirmed^ — for such an allegation 
could not be put beyond question by an appeal to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 287 

facts, that this vast difference, with its incalculable 
consequences, favourable as they are to the stability of 
modem nations, is wholly attributable to Christianity, 
either in the way of explicit injunction, or of moral 
influence. The social position of woman — her personal 
qualities and virtues — her place and her power, as wife 
and as mother, are the characteristics of certain races ; 
and being so, they mark those races as destined for 
progress, and as susceptible of refinement ; while fami- 
lies or nations that want the same inborn distinction, 
are doomed to be stationary through thousands of 
years ; or they are now melting away from the coun- 
tries they once filled. 

But in relation to the place which woman occupies, 
and to her qualifications for filling it, these two affirma- 
tions are safe from contradiction, namely, first this, that, 
as often as Christianity is off*ered to the acceptance 
of nations which do not possess this mark of nobility, 
as there can be no compromise on this ground, such 
races must either acquire, with the new religion, this 
redeeming instinct; or not acquiring it, Christianity 
retires from their borders, and when it does so, it 
consigns them to hopeless barbarism, or to gradual dis- 
appearance from among nations. 

But secondly, this may be affirmed — that in, any 
community (assumed to be noble in this special sense) 
in which the Gospel takes a firm hold of many minds, 
and in which it is publicly recognized as a final au- 
thority, it makes provision for securing the rights, the 
influence, and the personal dignity of woman — not 



288 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

indeed by legislating upon polygamy, adultery, con- 
cubinage ; but In a far more effective manner — in tinith 
in the only mode that could be effective — namely, by 
imposing the restraints of personal virtue, purity, and 
continence upon. man. Where men are virtuous, women 
will be pure, and where women are pure they will hold 
their place without the help of laws. 

Now we need look no further than this in search 
of what should be regarded as the primary con- 
ditions of national wellbeing, and accepting the two 
above specified as sui3ficlent, might in the manner 
following put our theorem into form. — Griven, a com- 
munity within which many may always be found 
whose individuality is at once marked and secured by 
their possession of profound religious convictions, and 
corresponding moral sentiments, which they will adhere 
to and will openly profess, even at the peril or cost of 
life itself: thus then we have a guarantee for religious 
liberty within that community, and through that, of 
civil and political liberty; and by means of these to- 
gether, there takes place the highest possible develop- 
ment of human nature, individually and socially. — * 
Given also a community within which certain evangelic 
dicta, such for instance as that comprehensive rule issued 
by Christ, as recorded by Matthew (v. 28), or that one 
by his minister, (Hebrews xiii. 4) are held to carry 
with them the awful sanction of Divine Law; and 
then, as the sure consequence, we have a social system 
which is sound at the core ; not false and putrescent : 
we have a system within which the brightest and the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 289 

best felicity which earth can yield to man shall be 
enjoyed in thousands of homes: — we have a social 
system within which, from thousands of sources — obscure 
and illustrious, from cottages and from mansions, from 
attics and lodgings, from shop parlours, and from 
halls of splendour, there shall spring forth, and spread 
themselves abroad perpetually, all the stern virtues, 
and all the soft, warm, and heavenlike affections; — 
all the smiling bright-eyed graces of innocent youth, 
and all the tearful and yearning sympathies of matron 
life ; in a word, all those bosom-heaving joys, and all 
those soul-healing griefs which render earth such, that 
men, while in the fruition of so much pure good, feel 
and know that there must be a Heaven to come, 
where earth's blossoms shall ripen into undecaying 
fruits. 

But now as to all this Christ-given earthly good, 
on what terms is it to be had, or in compliance with 
what conditions is it to be made sure to any people? 

Nothing more simple or certain than the reply : — 
the one condition is this, that Christ, the "author 
and finisher" of a Faith carrying with it these prin- 
ciples of Earthly Wellbeing, shall be thought of and 
listened to as God's authenticated minister, so as that 
we are sure that not one of his words shall fall to 
the ground, or fail to take eflfect upon ourselves, 
here, or hereafter. 

In other words, there must be available, in a form 
adapted to the reasonable requirements of an instinicted 
people — evidence sufficient, on the ground of which 

U 



290 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the convictions of such a community may securely rest. 
Belief Is the one condition which we need: grant It; 
and the consequences above-named follow. 

If Christ be trusted In — If Christ be feared as he 
who shall come to be our judge, and If he be loved 
as our Deliverer, he becomes at once ^' the Saviour 
of all men," and Is then the Giver, In this present 
life, of Liberty, Love, Virtue, and whatever of peace 
and felicity this life may be made to embrace In Its 
seventy years. 

Now I come round to my Immediate purpose In 
this section, which Is to show the bearing of the 
supernatural element of the Christian system upon Its 
perpetual Influence In the world, as the source, and 
the Impelling reason of secular good and of earthly 
felicity, or of solace and mitigation, as the case may 
be, to the human family. Remove the supernatural 
from the Gospels, or. In other words, reduce the evan- 
gelic histories, by aid of some unintelligible hypothesis 
(German-bom) to the level of an Inane jumble of 
credulity, extravagance, and myth-power (whatever 
this may be), and then Christianity will go to Its 
place, as to any effective value. In relation to human- 
izing and benevolent Influences and enterprlzes — a 
place, say, a few degrees above the level of some 
passages In Epictetus and M. Aurellus. 

Whatever may be the present estimated value of 
the best pages of classical antiquity, considered as a 
moral force, now in operation for the good of man- 
kind — then the residual value of the Gospels and 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 291 

Epistles — after the miracles have been driven oif in 
the furnace of ''historic criticism" — will be (may you 
not grant it?) about twice as much! In relation to 
the support of vegetable and animal life, let us ask, 
what would be the value of twice moonlight? 

The Gospel is a FORCE in the world, it is a force 
available for the good of man, not because it is 
Wisdom, but because it is Power. Whence comes its 
power? Tell me whence it will come after you have 
persuaded the world that, henceforward, in the book 
of history, it must be catalogued along with Frauds ? 

It is a customary observation, or truism, to say 
that the power of enjoyment and the power of suf- 
fering — necessarily correlatives— are directly as the 
quantity of the intellectual and moral faculty, and 
in proportion to the development of both. There 
may therefore always be room for the question how 
far, in a world such as this, abounding as it does 
in sources of suffering, an increase of intellectual 
and moral faculty, and the development of them, are 
truly to be desired. A question such as this we leave 
^where it stands. But this is certain, that, in the 
mechanism of human nature a remedial provision is 
made for the simultaneous and proportionate enlarge- 
ment of those helpful sympathies which bind us to- 
gether, in weal or woe, and which widen infinitely the 
interval between the cultured and morally developed 
man, and the savage. Am I, and are those around 
me, capable of enjoying and of suffering a thousand 
times more than is my brother, the troglodite? — yes, 

U2 



292 THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 

but then I may reckon upon receiving all sorts of 
aids and solaces — substantial help and tearful love, 
in my hour of suffering; while he is left in his den 
to be eaten alive by wild dogs or vultures. 

Nevertheless, while it is true that the benevolent 
affections, and the natural impulses of sympathy do, 
in a general way, keep pace with the expansion of 
the intellectual and moral faculties, it is also true that 
the force actually available in the world, at any time, 
for the relief of want, and for the assuagement of 
pain and woe, needs a constant momentum to be sup- 
plied to it from some energy that is foreign to itself. 
It is the presence of this constant force, drawn from 
a definite religious belief, which makes the difference 
between the vague philanthropy of the best times of 
ancient refinement, and the effective benevolence of 
Christianized modem communities. But the momentum 
supplied by the Gospel is a force which disappears — 
which is utterly gone, gone for ever, when Belief in 
its authority, as attested hy miracles^ is destroyed. 

This assertion might seem to need no proving, but 
it may admit of something to be said in the way o^ 
illustration. 

Let it be affirmed, on your side, that a miracle is 
abstractedly impossible, and that no such event has 
ever occurred in the world's history ; or that if it had 
occurred, it could not have been so reported to us 
as should now command our assent. Furthermore, 
let it be said that the mass of mankind have in all 
ages admitted such reports greedily, or in the exer- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 293 

cise of little discrimination. No such allegations, or 
the like to them, can affect my present argument. 
The evangelic miracles have in fact been accepted as 
true, and they are so accepted at this present time ; 
and the evidence in support of them is of such force 
that it commands the assent of educated men, who at 
the same time reject with contempt the entire mass 
of that spurious stuff which crams Church histories. 
This being the fact, the supernatural element of Chris- 
tianity is an extant efficient cause, working itself out 
now in the movements of every Christianized com- 
munity. Christian benevolence, expressing itself in 
a thousand forms of appliance, as related to the ten 
thousand phases of human suffering and degradation, 
is not a vapid sentiment with a tear on each cheek; 
nor is it an ambulatory wisdom, nor is it a schirrous 
humanity, grown upon political economy ; but it is a 
calculable resource, occupying a principal place in the 
estimate of a people's means of regeneration and pro- 
gress. Belief in the supernatural lifts this estimate : 
disbelief sinks it below zero. Belief is the spring 
or reason of practical benevolence in a country: Dis- 
belief is the azote of the moral world. 

Whether it be gladly and cordially, or grudgingly 
and formally, men on all hands do yield themselves, 
their personal services, or their purses, or both, to 
the assessments of aufJioritative Christian henevolence. 
To some extent the purest and most heavenlike im- 
pulses, and to a great extent conventional practices, 
feed Christian charity, public and private, and keep 



294 THE RESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 

it agoing ; but both alike take tbelr rise from a belief 
which Is held to carry with It the weight of Divine 
law — law that shall be valid In a future life. 

Instead of thinking of so mixed and ambiguous a 
mass as the national mind, let us now fix our atten- 
tion upon the restricted field of a Church-going com- 
munity, In a country like England. The minds that 
fill this narrower field may be distributed Into three 
classes, as thus : there Is, first, the large class of the 
inert, comprehending the thousands, young and old, 
who yield themselves. In various degrees of ductility 
or malleability, to the forces that are brought to bear 
upon them. The second class includes the smaller 
number of the repugnant, or recalcitrant, who are held 
within the Christian-charity pale by nothing better 
than secondary or sinister motives. These are those 
who are restrained from flagitious evil, and who are 
compelled to take a share in what Is good, by motives 
that are ready to snap at any instant. Then there 
is the third class — the true, the loving, the heart- 
whole, the BELIEVING; — those whose presence is the 
life-blood of the body ecclesiastical, spiritual and 
moral. 

Now with these three clearly distinguishable classes 
in view, as filling churches — side by side once a-week 
in pews — let me imagine that we had the power to try 
the two experiments following : — 

First, let it be that, from some hitherto unsuspected 
source, there has come up evidence, palpably contra- 
dictory of the Gospel history, as to its supernatural 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 295 

element. A flaw In the evidence has been brought 
forward — a flaw of such a kind as leaves no place 
for explanation. This discovery so acts upon the 
Church-going class as that the religious persuasion of 
the body suddenly collapses. Belief is gone; that is 
to say, all feeling toward Christianity as a revelation 
from God, miraculously attested, and having a valid 
claim to our reverential regard, has ceased. We have 
still in our hands the very same Text with all its 
excellent maxims, and its elevating sentiments, and 
its eloquent passages. But the parchment no longer 
entitles us to an estate — the parchment no longer 
alarms us with the threat of future pains. 

The Church bell goes the next Sunday morning 
after this fatal discovery has been noised abroad, and, 
scarcely knowing why, the congregation obeys the call. 
But at a year's end shall we find these same pews 
filled with families, taking a part in worship, and 
listening to a preacher? I think not. In one such 
Church there will be enacted a sensuous theatric super- 
stition ; — in another a lecturer will take his turn ; and 
there will be a platform, a moderator, and a debate; 
and the question will be — I should blush to put it in 
words, for I fancy of what quality that question will 
be. You will comfort me by the assurance that the 
pulpits from which fanatics have been driven will 
henceforward be occupied by philosophers — that Is to 
say, by men who will set about mending the world, 
and keeping it in repair by application of abstract 
truths — pure Theisms. Yes, and so may a man employ 



296 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

himself in carving a block of granite with a penknife, 
or in moulding a mass of clay with a straw. 

You have lost your standing of unmeasured hope 
and fear, grounded upon an attested message from 
God; and now what has become of the inert multi- 
tude? Do you think they will be patient listeners 
to your Spinoza Gospel ? or will they comprehend your 
Hegelian nihilism ? I think this mass will have gently 
subsided into its own native slough of easy, pleasure- 
loving sensuousness and sensuality. 

The repugnant and the ungovernable, where are 
they ? Lately, and so long as religious opinion hemmed 
them in, they were restrained or abashed to a great 
extent. But now they are told that all shall be well 
with them m the end — that the alarms of conscience 
are nugatory misgivings, which should be treated with 
sulphate of quinine and a shower-bath. They are 
assured that philosophers, though they are not agreed 
upon the question whether " absorption " or " annihi- 
lation" is to be the next stage of the ''!" or the 
" ME," yet are unanimous in the opinion that the one 
or the other of these desirable Issues awaits us ; and 
certainly not the fabled immortality of the Christian 
superstition. 

I ask you — and I ask you to give me an outspoken 
and truthful answer to this question — whether, in the 
now actual state of abstract Philosophy, as taught 
among those who reject Christianity, any announce- 
ment that should be morally better than this can be 
made when you convoke the Church-going inert mul- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 297 

titude to listen to their last sermon, and to receive the 
philosophic benediction ? 

But what has become of the cordial Few — whither 
has fled the life-blood of the social body? They 
have sickened and fainted on the spot where these 
sounds of dismay first fell upon their hearing. Their 
hearts broke at the blow. They can no more lift a 
hand in works of charity ; they can no more set a 
foot forward upon the flinty path of self-denying love. 
The wretched and the hungry and the sick call for 
them ; but they are as the dead that hear not. 

But I now imagine a contrary course of things, not 
a sudden and general enhancement of religious feeling, 
arising we know not whence or why, and after a 
while subsiding ; but what might fitly be called — a 
Restoration of Belief; that is to say, a confirmed 
rational confidence in the Divine authority of Christi- 
anity as attested by the miracles recorded in the 
Gospels. 

In what manner such a renovation of the belief of 
an instructed people might be spoken of as likely to 
come about, I need not now stay to inquire. It is 
sufficient to say that whereas the critical and historic 
argument in support of this belief stands at this time 
intact and valid, having of late years passed through 
the severest process of adverse analysis, almost any 
incidental occurrence, almost any casual coincidence 
turning up, unlooked for, on the path of the critic or 
the antiquarian, which should arrest attention and fix 
it upon the facts of the evangelic history, would suf- 



298 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

fice for bringing on the sort of revolution I am now 
thinking of. 

What is needed just now is not the creation or the 
evolution of a new body of evidence, but the awakening 
and rivetting of attention upon that which has long 
been in our hands. In a pitchy-dark night a party 
of travellers has come, they know not where ; but 
they feel that a pavement is under their feet: it is 
affirmed among them, and debated, and denied, that 
they have reached the principal square of a city: — at 
the instant a flash of lightning reveals the broad fronts 
of palaces, with a background of domes, spires, castles ; 
and thus all argument is at an end. — I think that at 
this very moment, when a murky cloud of atheistic 
darkness has settled itself down upon continental Eu- 
rope, the skirts of which chill these islands, the inci- 
dental coming up of any corroborative facts, within 
and upon the walks of historical criticism or of science, 
which should engage the attention of educated men, 
would be enough to dissipate this gloom, as affecting 
ourselves, and to refresh and restore our confidence 
in the Truth which, as a nation, we profess. 

But grant only such a refreshment to be possible, 
and imagine it actually to have taken place, and then, 
as if awaking from a troubled dream, as if shaking off 
a lethargy, we feel that the unseen and the future, 
as set before us in the Gospel, are near at hand, and 
that this future is what awaits each of us at every 
instant. Now the consequences, personal and social, 
of such a return to a vivid Christian Belief all go over 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 299 

to the Side of those energies which promote and con- 
firm our individual wellbeing, and the welfare of the 
community; that is to say, Christ becomes, at once 
the Saviour of the living the moment when his claim 
to be such is assented to in the world. And when 
this claim is allowed, then the miraculous qitestations 
upon which it rests come into a direct causal con- 
nexion with that earthly blessedness, of which the 
Christian system contains the elements. 

Without calling upon the imagination for aid, we 
may trace this connection till we come to facts that are 
now under our eye: we begin to follow the links of 
this chain in that hour when, as the sun was going 
down behind the Galilean hills, and the waters of the 
lake were darkening, a transaction had place which, 
from that moment to this, has never ceased to yield 
its results in the form of ponderable and calculable 
charities, whence the hungry and wretched throughout 
all time since have drawn supplies. 

Jesus seeing the multitudes, had compassion on 
them, because they had continued crowding around 
him, day after day, until their stores were spent. — He 
marshalled them in companies — for He was a lover of 
order; He blessed the bread that came to His hand, 
and from that hand distribution was made until all 
were satisfied. There are two things noticeable in this 
event. First, there is the authentication which it con- 
tains of those better impulses of our nature which 
prompt us to consider the welfare and comfort of others, 
and to do whatever may be done to meet the occasion 



300 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

that at any time calls up compassion. This Is the 
doctrine of this history. Next comes Its legislative 
import. To find this we turn over a page in the 
Gospels, and there are forewarned that in the closing 
act of Christ's administration of mundane afikirs this 
should be held to be a valid judicial test of character— 
"I was an hungered and ye fed Me"; or, on the con- 
trary, " I was an hungered and ye gave Me no meat." 
If this be the rule of the future judgment, then the 
feeding of the four thousand is not merely an exem- 
plification of benevolence, which we may do well to 
imitate; — it is much more. 

But whence comes this further and deeper meaning 
of this instance ? It springs directly from the miracle. 
If this history be true, then are we all yet to be dealt 
with according to the above-named rule or law, which 
we find to be in that case made and provided. 

Now through all the years of these eighteen cen- 
turies past, this history has been accepted as true — and 
moreover the judicial inference has been duly appended 
to the history among Christian nations, and it is so 
now, and the result now, as always it has been, is 
seen in ten thousand ''works of mercy" as they are 
called — public and private — stated and occasional ; the 
charities administered by ''committees" — the crust given 
at the cottage-gate — the alms, in ways innumerable, 
through which, at the prompting of natural sympathies, 
strengthened, deepened, enforced by the Christian rule, 
and by men's belief in the Christian future, the un- 
blessed — the luckless, the unhelpful, the feeble, the 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 301 

decrepit, the diseased, the maimed, the blind, the deaf, 
the insane, receive such help as their several cases 
call for, and admit of, and which the hand, heart, and 
purse of their fellows may afford. The Evangelist tells 
us that, in one of the instances now referred to, the 
number of the men was about five thousand, beside 
women and children ; say seven thousand altogether : 
jiow if we take each unit of that number, and give it 
a place at the head of hundreds of thousands, we shall 
still fall short of the truth in computing the hosts of 
the needy who, in the direct line of moral causation, 
have, through the course of time, eaten their bread 
daily from those Galilean baskets. The doctrine — the 
precept, the example, alone, would not have taken 
effect in any such manner as this ; but it has been the 
DOCTEINE — authenticated by the miracle : it has been, 
not mere teaching ; — but legislative teaching. 

Now there is a feeling which is natural, and there- 
fore not in itself to be reprehended, impelling us to 
ask that where legislation candies with it the most ex- 
treme consequences, touching us individually, the au- 
thentication should not come to us remotely, or be 
attainable inferentially only, but that it should come 
home to every man's consciousness, either through his 
senses or his understanding, in a mode that shall be 
unambiguous and categorical. Hence the demand so 
often repeated — ''show us a sign from Heaven." 
" Give to t^5— even to the men of this generation, a 
proof that the things written in the Book are sure, 
and that we shall find them so hereafter." 



302 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

I need not here reiterate the customary replies to 
this demand, and which, if fairly weighed, should I 
think be deemed valid and sufficient. But while, as 
now, we are thinking of Christianity as a secular re- 
forming force, intended by its Author to take effect 
through the lapse of ages, then I see, in the mode 
that has been chosen for establishing the authority of 
the system in the minds of men, throughout all time, 
a proof, not merely of a profound knowledge of the 
structure and laws of the human mind; but also a 
foreknowledge (how wonderful if its author were such 
only as you suppose him) of those revolutions in the 
intellectual as well as the moral condition of cultured 
nations which the flow of centuries was destined to 
bring about ! To me it seems as if the special mood 
or temper of this very half century in which our lot 
is cast, had been in the view of Him whose name this 
system carries. 

It is trite to say that during ages of barbarism and 
of popular ignorance, and of its attendant credulity, 
genuine miracles could scarcely, under any conditions, 
be made to offer themselves as infallibly distinguished 
from the spurious; but unless they did so, their legis- 
lative authority would be vitiated. If I go back to 
the times of the venerable Bede, or of Gregory of 
Tours, my mood of mind Is such that a miracle is 
congruous with it ; and I can look at it calmly, in its 
own light; it does not put me aghast. But then I 
have no habits of thought, I have no discriminative 
temper, impelling, or indeed enabling me to deal dis- 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 303 

cretlvely with the wonders that are daily reported and 
shown oflf before me. The genuine miracle, therefore, 
would retain little or none of its distinctive force. 

If from that twilight age I come down to these 
days, even to the times of Laplace and of Playfair, 
in which SCIENCE bears sway, and when Philosophy 
is in the wane, or is even scouted — at such a time, 
the occurrence of a miracle would be to me a shock 
or a violence, because there is nothing of homogeneous 
quality in my present intellectual condition. Whether 
I will or not, I am now governed, and in truth am 
overawed, by the dry, rigorous, and exceptive temper 
of Science, and by the soul-less and boastful mood of 
mechanical achievement. Doing homage, as I cannot 
help doing, to this spirit of the times, the super- 
natural has moved off far beyond my utmost range 
of thought. But let me not forget that this now-upper- 
most mood Is the mood of a period only : it is not 
to be thought of as if it were a normal condition of 
human nature; far from it! Aristotle is not a model 
man; it were better to take Plato as such. It is in- 
deed a great thing to resolve nebulae, and to construct 
steam navies, and to convey thought over land and 
across oceans, and round the equator upon galvanic 
wires: — these things are glories if we are comparing our 
own time with any times that are past: but they are, 
and they ought to be accounted woeful disgraces if we 
hear them boasted of as feats that symbolise the powers 
of the human mind in its ultimate and highest possible 
condition! If, in the next age. Philosophy should 



304 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

dare to breathe again, and should become bold enough 
to teach humility to Science, then man — spiritual and 
immortal as he is — might be trusted to witness miracles 
anew; and thus might step forward into the place that 
becomes him, where he would calmly hold correspond- 
ence, as at the first, with a stage of the universe 
higher than this, and would be permitted to look on- 
ward toward that eternity, on the threshold of which 
his foot is even now placed. And yet perhaps it will 
always be true that. In proportion as men become con- 
sistently reasonable, and acquire the habitude of yield- 
ing themselves implicitly and almost involuntarily to 
the conclusions of an authenticated practical logic, they 
will gladly accept, as best for thern^ the unchanging 
and the unchangeable certainties of historic evidence; 
and being content with these, will cease even to desire 
recurrent revelations, as from the unseen world. 

At this moment, a very little of the supernatural, 
taking place In the room next to that In which I am 
sitting, might shake my reason; for It would not find 
me In a state to yield my judgment or conscience to 
its bidding. Or, If It did not make the brain curdle, 
it would bring me under peril of a far worse kind; 
for I might be tempted so to resist this sort of appeal 
as to do a damage, that must be irremediable, to the 
moral and religious constitution of the mind. 

Quite of another sort would be an occurrence such 
as I have already supposed — namely — That, In the 
course of critical and historical studies, any residue of 
ambiguity still attaching to portions of the evangelic 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 305 

writings should be dispelled ; while new corroborations, 
such as in the nature of things spring up whenever a 
genuine history is subjected to severe scrutiny, are 
continually presenting themselves : — this species of aug- 
menting certainty, coming in upon the reasoning faculty 
in a mode the most congruous with it, in its present 
state, invigorates religious belief, and yet gives rise to 
no excitement ; — faith is deepened, and is made to rest 
upon a basis, coextensive with the intellectual and moral 
faculties. 

If at any time amid the toils and tumultuous 
strivings of the open world, or if, when too long ex- 
posed to the factitious excitement of non-christianized 
intellectual society, or if when, well satisfied with earth's 
choicest delights, I so rest in them as to forget the 
life future in the flowery paradise of domestic sweet- 
ness — if at any such time I suddenly awake to the 
infinite peril of losing my hold of immortality, what I 
should ask of Him who " knoweth our frame," and its 
frailty, would not be a new miracle wrought in my sight, 
but an hour's reading of the narrative of the miracles 
of the apostolic age, with a stringent conviction that 
this record is true, and that in those wonders the hand 
of the Almighty was indeed stretched out. 



Just now we are all of us saying it, and we are 
saying it under the impulse of the most diverse and 
opposite anticipations, that the world, or rather, those 
members of the human family that are progressive, 

X 



306 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

have, within these few years past, come into a posi- 
tion that is new, and that is full of promise. New 
conditions, marvellous indeed, attach to the mere me- 
chanism of common life ; — but more than this, new 
views of the ends and purposes of the social structure 
have come to be entertained, and have possessed them- 
selves of leading minds; — deep sympathies and solici- 
tudes, which were barely present to the consciousness 
of any in the last century, take effect upon thousands 
of sensitive and benevolent minds in this. The rudest 
and most ordinary impulses of worldly interest, which 
heretofore wrought their purposes in their own style, 
and came to a pause when they had attained their 
end, have come of late — no one can tell why — to under- 
work purposes of a higher order, and thus, like peasants 
trudging along a miry road with royal despatches 
bound in their girdles, they are diffusing blessings, 
where heretofore they had been recognised only as what, 
in guise and speech, they seem. There is nothing 
moveable, that is not astir; every social interest is in 
its crisis : — the sedimentary deposits of past ages are 
heaving up, and are dislocated. History has written 
out a long chapter of man's past fortunes, and a new 
leaf is even now rustling between her fingers. 

Thus far we are agreed; but not at all agreed 
either as to the principles under the guidance of which 
the proximate course of events shall proceed, or as 
to the issue of the movement. On this ground an 
extreme disagreement takes its rise. Two roads, 
offering themselves as the future highway of the 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 307 

nations, diverge at this point. You are straining 
the eye in looking along one of these ways: my be- 
lief, as a Christian, is directing me to look along 
the other. What the precise grounds of your antici- 
pations are, if warranted by facts^ or if they be better 
than gay reveries, I do not know, and need not in- 
quire: — whether they are bright or gloomy I do not 
know; perhaps they are alternately the one and the 
other, for this is likely to happen when theories which 
we would wish to cling to are contending in our minds 
against the uniform testimony of experience. 

As to my anticipations, though they are steadily 
bright, they are not unmixedly so, far from it: they 
much resemble one's prospects for a day's journey 
when, though the barometer has been slowly rising 
all night, the morning hour is much overclouded. 
I occupy two independent grounds of divination : the 
first is a purely secular calculation of that course of 
events which seems not improbable — all things now 
present being taken into the account ; but my second 
source of conjecture, as to the future, is a sketch of 
the world's way onward, which has been put into my 
hand fi-om above, and which I look into with confi- 
dence. What I distrust is, not the sketch, but my own 
hastiness in reading off the lettering. 

Yet assuredly I am liable to no such overweening 
delusion as this — that I should sit down, with the pages 
of Isaiah, Daniel, and St. John before me, and should 
attempt to write the Newspapers ten years in advance ! 
This is a folly which has stood in the way, hitherto, of 

X2 



308 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

a warrantable use of the prophetic writings. I am 
no fortune-teller for Czars and kings, and have no 
wish to peruse the palms of the " great men and the 
captains;" but, from the general import, or, as we 
colloquially say, from the drift and upshot of the pro- 
phetic writings — those of the Hebrew Scriptures espe- 
cially, I gather such things as these — and in specifying 
them, every diligent reader of the Bible will at once 
recollect the passages to which I might refer; and as 
to others, a foot-note of references would be thrown 
away. 

— I look forward to a time when national dis- 
tinctions of race, language, and geographical location 
shall continually be melting away, at least so far as 
they may ultimately be obstructive of the brotherhood 
of the human family. That centralization — apart from 
universal empire — which a true understanding of the 
conditions of social wellbeing tends to bring about, and 
which it is now in course of bringing about, is, I think, 
embraced or implied throughout the prophetic writings. 
On the same grounds I look for a future time when 
Right for the many, or, better expressed, when Right 
for ALL, shall be the sovereign and irresistible principle 
in every community. As to Right for the many^ it 
has taken to itself a conventional meaning, which differs 
little, if at all, from a periodic overthrow of society, 
such as may give the undermost class their time of 
plunder. But Right for all, means social stability ; 
and this one idea of stability, as opposed to anarchy 
and to periodic convulsions, meets us everywhere on 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 309 

the prophetic pages. Then, as the consequence of this 
my first anticipation, I look for a time when the material 
welfare, or, as we say, the earthly and daily comfort 
and enjoyment of the many — or let us rather say of 
all, so that we may exclude that banditti meaning 
which radicalism clings to — when this well-doing for 
all — this secure holding of the most needful things of 
life, shall be so much thought of as shall in fact realize 
it in a continually more and more complete manner. 
Between the two co-operative influences of an iron 
sense of right and justice on the one hand, and of 
humanizing and soft-hearted sympathies on the other, 
an intense feeling shall pervade the social mass, under 
the operation of which, want — still incident as it must 
be to man — and squalor, and houseless discomfort, and, 
what is worse, cellared wretchedness, and disease — 
the child of filth, shall always be in process of subli- 
mation, and shall be driven off*, as one may say, from 
the social mass, by its high internal temperature. A 
strong feeling of uneasiness at the sight or thought 
of privation and bodily misery shall be always ridding 
the world of these ever-recurrent evils. I look for 
a time, not fabulous and impossible — not rosy and 
celestial, but earthlike and sunny, when every man — 
absolutely secure from violence, and moderately at ease, 
shall sit, in home style, under, or near to, as he likes 
best, his vine and fig-tree, none daring, or even wishing, 
to make him afraid. I do not look for a time, on this 
earth, when there shall be no surgeons' work — no 
Hospitals, no Infirmaries, no police; but I do believe 

t 



310 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

in an age of individual and domestic bliss, such as is 
pictured in some sweet odes and stirring paragraphs 
of my Bible. I believe in a time yet to come, when 
He who — eternal shame upon Manichees, upon As- 
cetics, upon Fanatics of all sorts — "manifested His 
glory" first, by being a willing guest at a wedding, 
and then and there showing that Creation is His own 
— when He shall bless the world by bringing at 
once His iron sceptre of righteousness and His law of 
love to bear upon the temporal good of all men. I look 
for a time, when He who is "King of Peace" and "King 
of Righteousness," shall inile the nations under both 
titles; and when, as a consequence of the establish- 
ment of uncontradicted Truth, and of Beason, safe from 
sophistry, and of Right, bowed to and enforced, there 
shall be abundance of earthly felicity, to last until this 
planet has wound up its destined story. 

In the course of those events that have marked the 
years of this current century — that is to say, those 
ostensible matters which history takes account of — I 
scarcely discern any indications of the coming on of 
such an era of mundane welfare. One may imagine, 
to-day, that things are taking a turn in this better 
direction ; but to-morrow (as so many past to-morrows 
have done) will perhaps scatter every supposition of 
the sort, and break it up as a dream. But though 
the evolving fortunes of nations do not clearly, if at 
all, foreshew the golden age at hand, yet it is true that 
those who have been watching the unrecorded move- 
ments of the human mind — in Europe, throughout 
t 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 311 

these fifty years, and who have been used to let down 
a line into the under-current, and have noted its shift- 
ings, have come to think that those preparations — in- 
tellectual, moral, and political — which would be the 
proper precursors of a new and better era, have not 
only had a commencement, but have been making 
progress at a rapid rate. 

I shall risk nothing on ground where it is so easy 
to fancy this and that, just as may suit one's purpose 
in an argument. I shall put into your hand none of 
that advantage which you would so soon snatch at, 
if I were to venture forward a few steps on this path. 
There is, however, one of these preliminary move- 
ments which strictly belongs to my present subject, 
and to which, a second time (p. 256) and in concluding 
this section, I will advert. What I mean is that work- 
ing off of the anti-christian and atheistic philosophy 
which is now in such active progress. 

You and I are just now looking at Christianity 
from the same level: — you are regarding it as an in- 
vention of man, because, as you say, you see in it no 
marks of a higher origin : — it is, you think, a scheme 
of belief and of morals which two or three Jews of 
the times of Tiberius and Nero may easily be thought 
capable of concocting. This is your belief, and I am 
so thinking of it (monstrous hypothesis !) to serve a 
momentary purpose in an argument. 

Now while forcing myself into this false position, 
and persuading myself that the Gospel asserts nothing 
which we shall find to be true in the next stage of our 



312 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

existence, then I am perfectly certain that, on mere 
grounds of secular philanthropy, nothing is so much 
to be wished for as the spread, the corroboration, the 
Restoration of this Christian Belief. I am perfectly 
certain that a nation has an infinitely better prospect 
of coming into the enjoyment of peaceful good, while 
holding this belief, than it can have in rejecting it, 
and in taking in its stead — what? — Tell me, I pray 
you, what there is to be taken ! 

At the impulse of this firm persuasion I now there- 
fore exult in looking on while the process is in pro- 
gress which shall issue in the final engulphing of the 
several anti-christian Philosophies which are at present 
making a noise in the world. Each in its own way, 
and all together, these schemes are forging themselves 
down the slimy incline that shall shoot them, one and 
all, into the bottomless slough of exploded and for- 
gotten absurdities. 

You are acquainted, I may presume, with the course 
of abstract speculation in modern times, from Spinoza 
down to these days of the Positive Philosophy. Now 
if we both of us lay aside every lingering feeling of 
religious anxiety — if we think of Theologic Science just 
as we think of any one of the physical sciences, then 
it is impossible that we should differ as to what must 
be the issue of the present course of reasoning on the 
road of Disbelief. 

We see — and do you not see it as I do, and smile to 
see it *? — we see intelligent and amiable men struggling 
to keep their footing on some ledge, short of the gulph : 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 313 

— rosy-cheeked, honey-lipped gentlemen, they are, who 
would gladly keep entire a Theism — patched with 
borrowings from the Gospels. But how do they shift 
their articles of belief, from year to year ? At one time 
they think they should like a " Resurrection of the Dead, 
and a Future Judgment;" but anon they come to 
think not so well of these articles as once they did; 
or it has been demonstrated to them that any such 
persuasion involves the " supernatural," and cannot 
be retained unless they will choose to stand where 
they would be in hourly peril of becoming Christians. 
It is well for us that there is always within the pale 
of intelligence a large class of minds that, by fault 
of nature, want the analytic force which would enable 
them to ascertain the inevitable issue of the lines of 
thought they are pursuing. Without these minds an 
awful chasm would yawn between Belief and Disbelief; 
but these gentle spirits bridge it over. 

You well know that the endeavour to overthrow or 
to get rid of Christianity on the ground of historical 
criticism, has utterly failed. The historical problem is 
still unsolved on your side. You know, moreover, that, 
if certain positions are abandoned, which, if they are 
retained, we must in the end surrender ourselves to 
Christianity; then the alternative, which is as sure as 
any conclusion in science, is, a choice between Material 
Atheism, in its most grossly expressed form ; or, Ideal- 
istic Atheism ; and this latter, if it has any meaning 
at all, may be summed up in some such manner as this ; 
— "Whether there be any existence other and beside 



eS14 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the ' Ego,' I do not know ; or if there were any such 
second being, I could never come to know it. But 
then I do not know that I know so much as this: — 
nay, to speak the whole truth at once — I do not even 
know that I do not know this, because, for ought I 
know, T may know that I do not know it." 

Putting out of view a proper religious regard for 
the individual men, I thoroughly exult in standing on 
one side as spectator of this rush of our " Leading 
Minds" "down this steep place" into the gulf. The 
upshot of Abstract Speculation on the side of those 
who reject the Intuitive Principles of human reason, 
and of the moral constitution of man, has now fully 
shown itself to be a wordy nothing which, though it 
still clothes itself in sublime verbiage among our Teu- 
tonic neighbours, will never, in these lands of common 
sense, fail, after a little time, to be rejected with in- 
dignant contempt as naked nonsense. 



THE SECOND INTENTION OF CHEIST's MISSION, AS 
ATTESTED BY MIRACLES. 



Christ, the Saviour of the world, made no formal 
profession of His intention to do what He has actually 
done, and is now doing, for its benefit. He did not 
plainly say that He had come to civilize rude nations — 
to humanize savages, to abrogate slavery, to abolish 
polygamy, to bring into disuse judicial torture, to rid 
cities of the sanguinary exhibitions of the amphi- 
theatre, to break up caste^ and to set men forward on 
the course of free and hopeful improvement, on terms 
of brotherhood: — Christ said little of these purposes, 
great as they are ; but now that we see what it is 
which His religion does for nations, when it is allowed 
to take effect upon them in its own manner, we turn 
anew to the record of His sermons and parables, and 
there, without difficulty, we find the efficient principles 
of all these silent reforms, and can trace each of them 
separately to its source, in this or that word of power 
— precept, or instance. 

It is quite otherwise when the same Person comes 
to be regarded in His character as the Saviour, not 
of men, as occupants of seventy years, but of man as 



316 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

immortal; and so as the Redeemer of those who, to 
the world's end, shall be willing to accept immortality 
at His hands. On this ground there is no doubt or 
ambiguity as to the purpose to effect which He came 
into the world. He came to seek and to rescue those 
who, in every age and country, shall " hear His voice " 
— the voice of the "Good Shepherd," and hearing it, 
shall set forward upon the path which He trod, and 
which He opened for them, and so shall enter with 
Him upon the bright fields of immortality. The 
Christian scheme, looked at on this side, wears an 
aspect of the most determinate simplicity. On this 
side no mystery attaches to the language or professions 
of the Saviour; the mystery is that which shrouds 
the conditions of the rescue, and still more, its limits. 
Saved or lost ! who shall surmise what is the meaning of 
either of these words, the mere utterance of which, with 
thoughtfulness, staggers the reason, and which, when 
brought to take a bearing upon those who are now 
walking side by side upon the smooth path of domestic 
fondness, rends the heart, and quite bewilders the 
moral instincts. 

And yet, if we find ourselves entering upon a scene 
where thought and meditation fail to guide us, we 
soon find that there is no way of retreat, and that our 
only course is onward, following the beckoning of 
Him whose leading is ever toward the light. And now 
as the scene is shifted, so does the Person stand re- 
vealed in another manner. — Let us pause for a moment, 
and well consider what it is that is before us. 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 317 

— It is my steadfast conviction that Christianity 
will not henceforth maintain its ground, as related to 
the present intellectual condition of instructed com- 
munities, so long as " Christian apologists " (so called) 
take up a position upon the " outworks," or spend 
their efforts upon the well-meant but fruitless endea- 
vour to put forward the " Historic Evidences " apart 
from that petncipal truth, which forms the sub- 
stance of the Gospel. So long as this Principal Tinith 
does not occupy its due position in the mind and 
faith of the writer, and so long as it is not boldly 
presented to the mind of the reader, there is a con- 
sciousness, on both sides, of an interior incoherence 
in the system itself: there is a painful and perplexing 
feeling of incongruity, which sets these evidences a 
jarring, as well in a logical as in a moral sense, one 
against another. 

If this Principal Truth be A TRUTH, then, to mis- 
apprehend it — to hold it off, as if it might be accepted 
or rejected at our pleasure, while yet the historic 
evidence is admitted to be conclusive and entire — is an 
error fatal to the argument, logically, and of the worst 
tendency as to the reader's mind in a religious sense. 

For my own part I could not attempt, and in fact 
should fail to have any motive sufficiently impulsive 
for attempting, to set forth the Christian evidences on 
any other ground than that of an amply expressed and 
unexceptive orthodoxy. The use of this term, which 
carries with it a clear and ascertained historic meaning, 
saves many circumlocutions; it excludes ambiguities 



318 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and it exemp ts a writer, who wishes to keep clear of 
what would be a theological or exegetical argument, 
from the necessity of giving expression, in his own 
terms, to his own individual faith. No further expla- 
nation need be asked for by the reader from a writer 
who ingenuously declares that he professes, as his 
Belief, the several articles of the Nicene Creed. 

Do we hesitate to commit ourselves to a Belief, 
grasping, as this Greed does, conceptions which the 
finite reason labours in vain to apprehend? Yet be- 
fore we draw back, let us look to the alternative : let 
us inquire whether we will commend ourselves devoutly 
and joyfully to a Bright Infinitude, or will wander 
forever among schemes of Philosophy, or systems of 
religious belief, to not one of which, hitherto, has this 
same Reason, with all its efforts, succeeded in giving 
a tolerable degree of coherence or certainty. 

At this point I challenge those whose pursuits may 
have qualified them to accept such a challenge, to look 
back with me upon the field over which the human 
mind has been travelling these eighteen centuries. — 
There are two roads under the eye in such a retrospect : 
namely, that of Abstract Thought, on the one hand, 
and that of Christian Belief, or Theological Science, 
on the other. To the first of these I have just now 
adverted, and shall not repeat what I have said, other- 
wise than to express, in a varied form, a profound 
conviction — and it is a painful conclusion to come to — 
that, however abundant may be the means available 
for constructing a Theistic Doctrine, and however 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 319 

irresistibly conckisive the argument may be on this 
ground, yet, if we rigidly deduct from it, as we ought, 
all aids and materials that are due, directly or indi- 
rectly, to the Hebrew and Christian canonical books, 
we then find ourselves in an undefended — an inde- 
fensible position as toward the very darkest of those 
surmises which take their rise from that spectacle of 
misery and disorder which the human family has every- 
where, and has always, presented. On this road, has 
not the Terminus been reached long ago ? If it were 
required of us ''to report progress" in the depart- 
ment of Abstract Philosophy, let me be told whether, 
as honest men, we could affirm that those who profess 
to shake ofi* every restraint of theological bias and re- 
ligious prejudice, have at length reached a scientific 
position, which is so solidly based, and which is so well 
defined, as that it commands the assent, and may boast 
the adherence of all well-constituted and disciplined 
minds ? If there be any such Philosophy which is now 
available as a resting-place for the human mind, it 
must surely be easy to name it. No such Philosophy 
can be named; and in default of it, or until it shall 
appear, nothing stands in front of us — on the road of 
Abstract Thought — but an abyss which has become 
much more terrible in prospect at this time than here- 
tofore it was, because the lately-developed depth of 
the human mind, and its enhanced sensitiveness impel 
us, irresistibly, to people the dark void with ghastly 
forms. Psychological Science (or those dim conjectures 
that are its precursors) is robbing us of the fond illusion 



320 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

that " Death is an eternal sleep." Whether or not the 
Christian immortality is before us, there is an after 
stage for man ; and who shall say what may be its 
conditions? Why may they not be such as the analogy 
of things around us would suggest? 

The intuitions of human nature impel us to seek re- 
lief from these distracting speculations in a theology of 
some sort, and which, if only because it is more dis- 
tinct, shall be less appalling than are the fathomless 
surmises of a Pantheistic or Atheistic hypothesis. 

We pass over then to the road of Christian The- 
ology, or that line of dogmatic belief which is professedly 
derived from the canonical books. But among these 
beliefs, such as they stand before us on the pages of 
Church history, which is it that we shall choose? 

I think it will be granted that the tenour of re- 
ligious history — ^looking now to the speculative (not the 
ecclesiastical) side — is of this sort:— There has been 
going on, throughout these eighteen centuries, an ever- 
renewed endeavour, on the part (no doubt) of earnestly 
purposed minds, to make good a position somewhere 
short of that Belief to which the Nicene Creed gives 
a formal expression. It could not have happened other- 
wise than that such endeavours should be perseveringly 
made, and that the failure of one of them should suggest 
and prompt to the making of another. The restless 
curiosity of the human mind, its impatience of restraint, 
and the diverse structure of individual minds, necessi- 
tate these perennial enterprises, the purpose of all of 
which is to win a resting-place for thought where the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 321 

things it converses with are measurable, apprehensible, 
and subject to its control. The history of these fruit- 
less enterprises, if it could be candidly written — if it 
could be written otherwise than as under the polemic 
title, '' A History of Heresies, and of Heretics," would 
supply the best sort of corroborative evidence in support 
of Orthodoxy; inasmuch as they would all indicate 
their rise in the same error of attempting to gene- 
ralize where the object is unique, and can have no 
parallel. 

But now, in looking back upon this road — a battle- 
field as it is — let us ask which of these heresies (for 
convenience I so call them) can now be spoken of 
as a successful solution of the difiiculties it professes 
to deal with? which of them, from the apostolic age 
to this, is it that has been accepted by Bible-reading 
communities as proven? which of them is it that, by 
fair means of interpretation, has put itself in harmony 
with the Text of the apostolic writings? If I could 
divest myself, at this moment, of every residue of reli- 
gious solicitude, and could, in that mood of indifference, 
sit down to review the heretical series, I should be com- 
pelled to grant, concerning each of them in its turn, 
that its elements are incoherent, that its argumentative 
style is tortuous and sophistical, that its method of 
biblical interpretation is a system of shifts, that in sur- 
rendering oneself to it, as a scheme one might accept 
and rest in, one is driven to wish that it could fairly 
divorce itself, either from its philosophy on the one side, 
or from its professed regard to Scriptural authority on 



322 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

the other; for as a philosophy it is burdened with the 
Bible ; and as a biblical theology it is spoiled by its 
philosophy. 

Not one of those schemes of biblical belief which, 
in the lapse of time, has disputed the ground with 
the Nicene Faith, recommends itself by that charm of 
Interior Congruity which this latter so conspicuously 
possesses. It is this alone that is an Entire Belief, 
and concerning which it may be affirmed that its ele- 
ments — abstract, moral, and spiritual, are in unison. 
In this Belief there is proportion, and symmetry, and 
that grandeur and simplicity which is the inimitable 
characteristic of a Great Truth in any department. 
With this Belief at my heart, the logical ground of the 
historic evidences is firm to the foot: without it, while 
attempting to give coherence to the body of proof, I 
tread a shifting sand-bank. Without it, the super- 
natural narratives of the Gospels stand out as unsus- 
tained, and as disproportioned to the doctrine; and I 
am fain to rid myself of them, if possible: with it, 
the miracles of Christ's public life take their places 
of fitness as the graceful accompaniments of the mi- 
nistry of Him who " dwelt among us" for effecting a 
purpose far greater than all miracles, and more arduous 
than the uttering the creative fiat. 

Although I can grasp no one element of my Creed, 
either meditatively or scientifically, for each is a pro- 
perty of the Infinite, yet in the meditative contem- 
plation of it I am at rest; for the object before me 
contradicts no intuition of my moral nature. The con- 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 323 

tour Is that of Majesty — the Person meets and gives 
contentment to the highest conceptions I can form, 
both of perfect humanity, and of Divine benignity 
and wisdom. 

Then, as this Catholic Belief is entire in itself, and 
as it fully realizes whatever Is time In human nature, 
and whatever we may conceive of as proper to the 
Divine nature, so does it interpret itself into the lan- 
guage of my own spiritual life with a happy and a 
healthglving facility. Those emotions w^hich it finds 
in me dormant, and which it wakes up in me, I can- 
not but yield myself to, and gladly obey, when once 
they are thus quickened. 

In an hour of perplexity and dismay — such as are 
incident to every human spirit that is not lost In sen- 
sualities, or occupied with sordid aims — If in such an 
hour, when the atmosphere of hopeless woe Is that In 
which one can breathe the freest — if at such a time I 
ask, and ask It as if no bright answer could be returned 
to such a question, what that eternal life might be 
of which I, such as I am, could be the recipient, and 
which it would be possible for me to enjoy, or even 
to wish for — I find my answer in my Creed. This 
life of the soul — the life eternal. Is not what I am 
either fit for, or could think of with comfort ; but it 
is such as It Is fitting for Him to bestow who is what 
my Creed declares Him to be. If In seasons of 
saddened thought, amid Inveterate hesitations and per- 
plexities and misgivings, I take up the several rudi- 
ments of my now actual condition, moral and spiritual 

Y2 



324 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

— if I know myself to be, as indeed I am, disordered, 
broken, powerless, faulty, and utterly wanting in any 
quality or talent out of which I might perchance work 
the price of my redemption from this state, or might 
perchance draw toward me the eye of Infinite Com- 
passion — if I feel and know such things as these, and 
if, while so feeling, I form to myself some notion of 
immortality, even of an endless consciousness, with all 
the odds of infinity against me, and thus ill provided 
for; — thus thinking in a way which I am forced to 
admit is according to a true estimate of myself, then 
do I shrink back from a boundless prospect of golden 
bliss, and ask rather that there may be assigned to 
me, as heaven's best boon, the dimmest corner of the 
universe, wherein to lie forgotten, and wherein to while 
away the cycles of an obscure eternity. 

Thus dismayed, thus uncomforted, thus tempted to 
envy the natures around me that are not immortal, if 
then, by help given me from above, I look upward, 
if I look Sun-ward, if I turn to my Belief, and accept 
it such as it appears — a Truth, heaven-descended, then 
the darkness of my soul is dispelled by that Light. 
That immortality which, when regarded from a point 
of view proper to myself, is inconceivable, or, if con- 
ceivable, is undesirable, comes now to be contemplated 
in its own light — it is life-endless in Him, and His royal 
gift, who is the Light of Light, and the life of immor- 
tality; — it is the gift of Him in whom the perfections 
of the finite, and the attributes of the Infinite are so 
blended that a boundless and a bright hope comes to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 325 

its rest upon those unchangeable attributes, brought 
within our reach by those human perfections. 

This eternal life, which is offered to me in the 
Gospel — the Gospel being interpreted as it is in my 
Creed, and therefore not to be thought of as if it were 
a superfluous announcement of known moralities, but 
as a revelation of Truths quite unattainable by reason 
— is of universal aptitude, in relation to human nature 
in its actual condition ; and it must be so thought of 
even although in fact it were but one In millions that 
should accept it. Christianity is not a religion for the 
religious, but a religion for man. I do not accept it 
because my temperament so disposes me, and because 
it meets my individual mood of mind, or my tastes, 
I accept it as it is suited to that moral condition in 
respect of which there is no difference of importance 
between me and the man I may next encounter on 
my path. 

There is a constant tendency in minds of a certain 
order — which delight in first-glance generalizations — 
to assume the contrary of what I here affirm, and to 
think themselves very wise in professing the shallow 
hypothesis that the Christian, if he be not a hypocrite, 
if he be a sincere and devout man, is such by in- 
dividual organization — by temperament. It is not so : 
those who thus think want discrimination ; and they 
want also an acquaintance with facts of this class. 
''Philosophers" who so speak are — smart spirits it may 
be, but such as show that they have little sympathy 



326 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



With that which is profound in human nature ; and as 
to their own souls, there is not depth enough in them 
for any affection that roots itself below the surface. 

In affirming this in the most categorical manner, 
I shall not be contradicted by those whose large 
experience among " the religious," through a long 
course of ministerial labour, qualifies them to give 
evidence on such a question. Grant it that, if you 
draw, alphabetically, from out of a religious community, 
a hundred persons whose habits are devotional, and 
whose course of life consists with their profession, this 
selection will include those whom one might in a sense 
call the ''devout born": — by this phrase I intend to 
designate persons whose temperament, intellectual and 
emotional, whose sensibilities, and whose tastes, are 
all of the kind that favours the happiest development 
of the religious affections. There may be four or five 
such in any hundred; — rarely so many as ten or 
twenty. But within the limits of the same hundred 
there will be found (and yet they shall be unfeignedly 
religious persons) more than a ten or twenty whose 
piety has had no aid whatever from what it has found 
in them — has met with nothing congenial in the tone 
of the sentiments, in the imaginative faculty, or in 
the rational. Yes, have we not seen and well known 
some of this order, and been near enough to them, 
for a length of time, to look into their common-made 
souls — to see through their honest but homely hearts? 
Have we not seen, admired, and loved such, and been 
cordially understood with them, and have wished to 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 327 

be like them — who, if you could abstract from them 
all that a Christian belief and a Christian piety has 
done for them, in giving them intelligence, in giving 
them taste, and a sense of propriety, in shedding a 
healthy warmth through the social affections — yes, and 
in quickening within them a consciousness of the sub- 
lime and the beautiful — such that, if stripped of the 
heavenly enrichment they have received, they would, 
in most of these aspects, have been as the dead, the 
deaf, the blind, the idiotic; so marked were they by 
nature with the not to be mistaken stamp of inane 
mediocrity, that an hour in their society would have 
been an intolerable weariness. But they have become 
what now they are, because the " eternal life" has 
made its commencements in their hearts ; and because, 
in daily and hourly earnest exercises of the soul, they 
hold communion with Hi^^i who is — what my Creed 
declares Him to be. 

Those whom the Saviour Christ — the Good Shep- 
herd, gathers about Him from out of each generation 
of men, as it passes forward in time, and who, at no 
time, are more than a " little flock," are so chosen as 
if designedly in contravention of any rule of obvious 
or natural causation; and so as at once to illustrate 
the sovereignty of the choice — to display the omnipo- 
tence that gives effect to it, and to demonstrate a 
deep truth — namely — the universal applicability of this 
salvation to human nature. Christ's foUow^ers are in- 
deed exceptional, if we reckon them by arlthemetic: 
but they are not exceptional, psychologically. 



328 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Christ's true followers, in every age, are, we say, 
not a class of persons who might be pointed out 
before they become such : — they are not believers of 
the Gospel by idiosyncracy ; — but they are so because 
they have come to know the truth of their condition, 
as toward God, which is the condition of all men 
alike — whether they know it or not. Need it be 
shown that they are not the class of Mystics? Mys- 
ticism is the religion of abstraction ; but Christianity 
is religion in the concrete: — the two mental conditions 
are antagonistic. Mysticism is intellectual voluptuous- 
ness, and must therefore be abhorrent to a system, the 
first precept of which forbids self-seeking, and every 
seclusive personal indulgence. Or need it be shown 
that Christ's own followers are not the few of any 
ecclesiastical enclosure, any more than they are the 
sturdy adherents and warm defenders of sectarian doc- 
trines. 

Nothing so catholic as is that spiritual life into the 
composition of which there enters these rudiments — 
a consciousness of guilt and helplessness, for one part, 
and a correlative intuition of grace and help in God, 
for the other part. And if there be these rudiments, 
the Giver of so much grace will doubtless give more 
in due season. 

How comforting is it to meet, on one's path, with 
one whose spiritual life is just rudimenta,l in this sense ; 
for if there be one such, there may be thousands whose 
names appear on no muster-roll of the visible Church. 
It is not true that doctrine is of little account in the 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 329 

spiritual life; but it is true that souls may live — 
live on till they wake up in immortality, with less 
of doctrine worded in a creed than human language 
could know how to attenuate. 

Christ's true disciple is one who — at any moment — 
at a call — at a beckon, will rise from the couch and 
table of worldly enjoyment, and follow him through 
whatever rugged way it is that his Guide is going. 
In any company of persons who have entered their 
names in ecclesiastical lists — let the word — the whisper 
be heard — " The Master is come and calleth for thee," 
and those, among them for whom the summons is 
intended — rise, at the instant — rise, trembling perhaps 
and doubting, but yet they do rise, and they go 
''whithersoever He goeth." 

That such there are, and more than a very few, 
in each following generation, is a fact forcing itself 
upon the convictions of every thoughtful and ingenuous 
reader of the history of Christianity; — forcing itself 
upon the convictions of every thoughtful and ingenuous 
observer of Christian communities as they now are. 

These facts, which I assume to be patent and un- 
questionable, will receive a theological interpretation 
such as may best accord with the doctrinal system 
which we individually adhere to, and which we allow 
to overrule, or to dispose of all facts, in its own 
manner. Such an interpretation may be nipped in 
between imaginary logical necessities ; or it may be 
ample, ingenuous, unencumbered. Yet either way, not 
an iota is added to, or is taken away from the simple 



330 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

reality with which we have to do — namely, that Christ's 
true followers are, as He said they should be, a few 
from among those whom visible Christianity embraces, 
and upon whom it confers temporal blessings. 

This reality, stripped of what is incidental to a 
Christian profession, and of what is merely conventional 
also, and of what may be ambiguous, reduces itself to 
an elementary moral and religious state of mind, which 
is variously described by the apostolic writers, but yet 
always so as to embrace the ruling idea of an inti- 
mate conscious relationship between the human spirit 
and the Divine Nature, and as this Divine Nature is 
brought within the range of human conceptions and 
of human emotions in the Person of Christ. It is the 
duty of every one who becomes alive to his welfare 
in the future life, to ascertain for himself, alone, the 
fact of this relationship, as subsisting or not. As to 
others — and as to all around him who take to them- 
selves the Christian name, it is the part of charity to 
accept every such profession as valid and genuine which 
does not receive a glaring contradiction in the life 
and temper of the individual. 

As to the limits and the conditions of this " Charity 
that believeth all things," we have nothing here to 
do with them. I am now thinking of the Christian 
scheme as the cause and the source of spiritual life to 
the individual human spirit. Now if a hundred such 
instances could be laid open, it would, I think, be 
found that, for one that believes the Gospel on grounds 
of historical evidence, or believes it because it has been 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 331 

logically proved to be true, ninety-nine accept It, with 
a perfect assurance, on the strength of that sense of 
congruity which itself brings home, both to the heart 
and the reason, whenever it is apprehended by both 
in conjunction. But it is manifest that this species 
of intuitive conviction is not of a sort that can be 
brought within the range of language, for the purpose 
of conveying it, verbally, from one mind to another. 
This certitude can no more be defined or described, 
than can any primary element of our consciousness be 
so treated. 

Least of all can that one which may be called the 
very element among the elements of the divine life be 
verbally set forth, or be brought to submit itself to 
the process of development in a string of propositions. 
This rudiment of the spiritual life is a consciousness 
of the Absolutely Good, more or less clear, and 
which, to the human spirit, in its now actual condi- 
tion, involves a correlative consciousness — painful and 
humbling, of moral disorder. How can such an awaken- 
ing as this be passed through without anguish — with- 
out some intensity of suffering? Any such agony of 
the soul, endured at the moment of the dispersion of 
the gay dreams of self-love, must indeed vary, as to 
its intensity, very greatly, according to the structure of 
the individual mind, and according also to its history, 
and to its experiences; yet may we surely take this 
as an axiom — That where there has been no agony 
in the moral nature, there is no spiritual birth. 

But whence comes this sense of congruity which 



332 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

I have once and again spoken of, and which brings 
with it a ready assent to the first truth of the 
Christian scheme — the ineffable union of the Divine 
and human nature in the Person of Christ? Certainly 
I shall not here attempt to spread out in a paragraph, 
or to put into a string of sentences, that which, as it 
so soon transcends the meditative faculty to grasp it, 
so much sooner baffles a writer's faculty of embodying 
his thoughts in forms of speech. Yet if an explana- 
tion be sought for of the fact that, with very rare 
exceptions. Christian people, whose depth and serious- 
ness of feeling indicates itself in an unambiguous 
manner, do cordially accept the articles of an Orthodox 
Creed, the explanation is discoverable at this rudi- 
mental point. The leading article in that Creed meets 
the awakened and wounded human spirit, and so calms 
the perturbations of the soul — it so satisfies its alarms, 
and so brings it to its resting-place, as that the tex- 
tual evidence, when adduced in detail, is listened to 
with comfort, and is assented to with a spontaneous 
confidence. 

Let it be argued, as it easily may — very learnedly — 
on grounds metaphysical, and on grounds ethical, that 
the Christian doctrine of Propitiation for sin (stated 
without reserve) is " absurd" — and that it is " impos- 
sible" — and that it is "immoral" — and that it is every 
thing that ought to be reprobated, and to be met 
with an indignant rejection; — let all such things be 
said, and they will be said to the world's end — it will 
to the world's end also be true that each human spirit, 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 333 

when awakened toward God, as to His Moral attri- 
butes, finds rest in that same doctrine of the vicarious 
sufferings of the Divine Person, and finds no rest until 
it is there found. 

I have just now affirmed that not one of those 
earnest endeavours which have been made in the course 
of centuries to establish a doctrine of lower import than 
the Nicene, has had any permanent success; and the 
ostensible reason of this failure, in each instance, may- 
be found in its want of accordance with the canonical 
standard. But the more occult meaning of these suc- 
cessive shipwreckings of heretical enterprises is to be 
sought for among those laws of the human mind which 
forbid its resting short of an intimate sense of con- 
gruity among the principles that are offered to its 
acceptance. The promulgators of such schemes, them- 
selves, find no repose in them; for they are morally 
incoherent. Souls alive toward God can only pine 
and languish, and look from side to side, until they 
find Him, as the object of their trust, whom they thence- 
forward worship as " God their Saviour." Do you 
ask me to bring forward irresistible proof that Christi- 
anity is from Heaven ? I can do this to such an extent 
as that you will fail, by any fair means, to over- 
throw my argument. But there is a shorter course. 
Come with me now into the presence of the Infinite 
Rectitude and Purity: — when there, renounce not that 
tnie dignity of human nature in virtue of which you 
are capable of such an introduction; and which makes 
you rightfully amenable to this bar: — while standing 



334 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

confronted with Eternal and Inexorable Justice — learn 
what you are, and frankly acknowledge what is simply 
true ; and it is then that argumentation will seem to you 
a superfluous labour, and that the ''historic evidences" 
will be superseded by the powerful workings of the 
soul upon its own troubled consciousness. 

In every instance in which Christianity comes to be 
assented to and accepted on this ground — the ground 
of its meeting the requirements, and assuaging the 
anguish of a quickened spiritual consciousness, then the 
miracles of the Evangelic history at once shift their 
position, as toward the reasoning faculty. Heretofore 
they were thought of as so many proofs (if real) of 
Christ's mission, as a teacher sent from God; and the 
one question, if any question at all were asked, was 
this — " Can we be sure that the record is not falla- 
cious? But from the moment when the human spirit 
has coalesced with the Principal Truth of the Chris- 
tian system, then this series of miracles takes its sub- 
ordinate place, as along side of the course of the Divine 
Deliverer while he trod the earth. How can we ima- 
gine otherwise than that, at any moment while on his 
way toward the spot where he was to expiate the sins 
of the human family, he should show his command of 
nature, and of life, and should do it with a freedom 
and a copiousness becoming those attributes that were 
shrouded in his Person? 

It was undoubtedly under this aspect, that the 
writers of the canonical Epistles were accustomed to 
think of the supernatural adjuncts of the Keligion which 



THE EESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 335 

they taught. To these attestations of their ministry, 
as from God, they appealed on special occasions only; 
but then it was in a manner which forbids the attempt 
to dislodge them from their place in the system, or to 
treat them as the inexplicable illusions of weak minds. 
Yet while to these facts they make none but incidental 
and infrequent references, they were earnestly intent, 
first, upon the diffusion of the Gospel Message, and then 
upon its influence in governing the life and temper of 
those who received it. No moment of their precious 
time do they consume in the endeavour to show that 
Christ's miracles, and that their own, were real; — no 
solicitude do they betray on that ground. — What they 
feared was, on the one hand, lest men should reject 
this Gospel ; or, on the other, lest, professedly accepting 
it, they should in conduct and temper deny it. 

To the right-minded Christian of this present time 
the Evangelic miracles are not the props of a tottering 
belief; but they are the food of delicious meditation. 
He peruses so often, and with unsatiated pleasure, these 
narratives, not that he may, by these means, repair 
the dilapidations which his faith sustains in the open 
world; but that, by their aid, he may bring, daily, 
within the range of his conceptions, the conditions of 
that future world wherein the distinction between the 
natiu'al and the supernatural — arbitrary as it is, shall 
have vanished, and where a perpetual nearness to 
Omnipotence shall kindle and shall keep alive the 
feeling that all things natural are always in truth 
supematiu-al. There can be no miracles in a world 



336 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

where the unclouded blaze of Eternal Power fills all 
space, and is visibly in act every moment. The dif- 
ference between the natural and the supernatural 
is relative, not absolute — it is not essential. We so 
account of events of this kind according to the posi- 
tion in which at any moment we happen to stand 
toward them. Grant me so much as this, that the 
miracles recorded in the Gospels — the feeding the mul- 
titudes — the healing the sick — the giving sight to the 
blind — the raising the dead, were looked at, not only 
by mortal, but by immortal eyes ; — that while the rude 
multitude pressed around Jesus of Nazareth, and were 
filled with wonder, and said "we have seen strange 
things to-day" — there was a throng supernal — looking 
on also. — But to these the very same acts of benign 
omnipotence wore the tranquil aspect of familiar ex- 
perience: with them wonder can have no place, for 
it is embraced and absorbed in adoration. These mira- 
cles — so we on earth must call them, and which we 
are accustomed to speak of as inroads upon the course 
of nature, are, if truly considered, so many fragmentary 
instances of the Eternal Order of an upper world. 

It Is often alleged that the miracles (even granting 
them to have been real) of a remote age can be of no 
avail to us, at this time, and especially in this our ad- 
vanced condition as to intellectual culture. Assuredly 
they are of no avail, and can be of none, to those 
who regard Christianity as an Inexplicable anomaly, 
attaching to the history of that anomalous race — the 
descendants of Abraham. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 337 

Let US take the centre miracle of the Christian 
system — the Resm-rection of Christ, and see what is 
its bearing upon the mind and heart — upon the intel- 
lectual and religious wellbeing of one who accepts 
the Gospel as the groundwork of his spii'itual life — 
as the reason of every fear, and of every hope, which 
he allows to sway his conduct. 

The Resurrection of Christ is the very life of 
that inner life — of that initial immortality which is 
bestowed upon those who, in every age, " hear His 
voice" and " follow Him." These hear Him say, 
" Because I live, ye shall live also." — " I am the re- 
surrection and the life." — ''If any man hear my voice, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live." 

Now we may follow that process which takes place 
in the instance of one with whom the reasoning fa- 
culty is sound, and has received a due culture — who is 
informed in all matters of religious history and criti- 
cism; and we suppose that his moral history and pre- 
sent condition are not such as to breed an instinctive 
wish to rid himself of his belief: on the contrary, his 
best feelings impel him to wish that he may find in- 
dubitable warrant for it. Grant it, that this Christian 
persuasion has not been acquired in a strictly logical 
order; for he has come into the possession of it by 
education — by devotional habitudes, and by the invo- 
luntary intuition of his moral nature. But at a certain 
moment in his course he makes a pause, and in that 
mood of firm resolve which is characteristic of a 
strong intellect and a strong will, he determines to 

z 



338 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

convince himself that his faith is solidly based upon 
what should be its proper evidence; — or if he cannot 
do this — he is prepared boldly to renounce it. 

For the sake of convenience, and to avoid circum- 
locutions, I throw this descriptive analysis of the pro- 
cess of belief into the form of a personal narrative. 
Thus resolved then, as I have said, I set out on my 
road, taking with me this unquestionable preliminary — 
namely — That, if a religious persuasion is to come into 
its place among those principles of action which, on 
any supposition, must govern the active and moral life, 
if It is to sway me, notwithstanding many impulses 
and motives which might prevail with me in a contrary 
direction — if my religion (be it what it may) is to 
work in and along with the established mechanism of 
the world of mind — such as I find it to be, if so, then 
the confidence I may feel in its truth must, of necessity, 
rest upon such ground as that an opposite belief, or an 
absolute rejection of it, may yet be possible. If I am 
to become a religious man, in the Christian sense, then 
it must be at least conceivable that I might become 
an irreligious man, in that same sense. If a religious 
belief is with me to be the same thing as are my 
moral beliefs; if it is to act as an influence counter- 
vailing other influences, then it must be possible for 
me to disbelieve. There could not be a Christian, in 
a world constituted as this is, if there were not always 
room for a man to be an Infidel. 

Christianity and Abstract Theism occupy precisely 
the same ground, considered under this aspect. If in 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 339 

this world of discipline — this world of educational anta- 
gonism — this world of products wrought out of con- 
trarieties — if I am to possess a faith in God, as my 
Creator, Judge, and Father, this faith must be the cor- 
relate of its logical opposite — Atheism. The Theist, in 
this present world, will never cease to find himself face 
to face with the Atheist. Wherein then consists the 
blameworthiness of the Atheist ? it is this : — knowing — 
and he cannot be ignorant of a truth so obvious — that 
the system of motives to which he conforms himself 
every day in the open world, always leaves room for 
an exception or an evasion, he snatches at that ex- 
ception, and he uses that evasion when the Theistic 
evidence presents itself before him; but he does not 
do so in any other instance, unless he be fool or 
knave. The virtuous man is one who manfully holds 
to the rule, and spurns the exception, and who scorns 
to escape by the evasion : he embraces the principle, 
and he casts from him the sophism ; he adheres to 
universal intuitions; he listens not to the paradox. 

This premised, I go to work at the beginning of 
the Christian evidences, and ask, as it concerns my own 
prospect of immortality, whether those things are sure, 
that are taught and affirmed in the Apostolic writings. 
It may be that I should have preferred some other me- 
dium of evidence, touching a point of such incalculable 
moment. But whether I choose it or not, I find my- 
self handed over to this peculiar species of proof. Yet 
in looking into it — on the supposition that God, the 
Father of my spirit, challenges me to accept it, I find 



34:0 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

that, as to Its completeness, in its hind^ and as to its 
conclusiveness, the body of historical and critical evi- 
dence very far surpasses any other instance with which 
it ought to be brought into comparison. That this is 
the fact has become manifest at this present moment, 
inasmuch as the strenuous endeavours of accomplished 
men, inflamed with the ambition to overthrow Chris- 
tianity, have confessedly broken down. After reading 
what has been written with this view, I find that I can 
in no way disengage myself from this evidence, except 
by forcibly dismissing the subject from my thoughts. 
But I go on to sift this evidence, at intervals, and I 
do so with all possible care, and in different moods of 
mind, and I come ever and again to the same result. 
I read the recent antichristian literature, and in doing 
so candour is sorely tried if I persist in supposing 
that educated men are honest when they put forth 
what is so frivolous, so captious, and so nugatory, as 
that which they advance in behalf of their disbelief. 
I converse with those who profess this disbelief, and 
Instead of rigid argumentation — serious in its tone, 
land ingenuous — I am met by a style of reasoning 
which is unanswerable only because it is vague, misty, 
evasive, and sentimental. 

It is enough: — I see that before I can stand clear 
of Christianity, I must let go my hold of those ele- 
mentary convictions which rule my every-day life. 
To me, Disbelief must act as a solvent of all logical 
coherence, and must discharge from my mind every 
persuasion which binds me to the social system now, 
as well as those which connect me with immortality. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 341 

I return then with assurance to my Belief, and 
I surrender myself without fear to that train of medi- 
tation which attends, and surrounds, its centre fact — 
the resurrection of Christ. 

At this point the Supernatural, in an instance the 
most signal and the freest from ambiguity, takes a 
bearing upon my individual state of mind, and touches 
my fears, my hopes, and my conscience, and gives a 
turn to the emotions, excites the imagination, and 
occupies the reason. That Jesus Christ '' suffered, and 
died, and that He rose again," is a fact in yielding 
myself cordially to the belief of which I pass forward 
from one condition of existence, and come into another ; 
and this change is so extensive in its consequences, that 
nothing affecting my happiness can remain unaffected 
by it. That remote event with which I stand con- 
nected through the medium of historic and critical 
evidence, concerns me far more intimately than could 
any event of to-day which should entirely change my 
individual or social position. 

What those changes are, severally, of which a belief 
in Christ's resurrection is the efficient cause, I shall not 
here attempt to specify. I will speak only of two of 
them ; and of these, not in the style of a digested and 
consecutive discourse, but discursively. 

In the first place then, an unhesitating belief of 
the resurrection of Christ — if I allow the meditative 
faculty to dwell upon it — leads me forth from a region 
of interminable surmises that are comfortless, appall- 
ing, or worse; and it brings me upon a ground that 



342 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



is firm to the foot, and where those objects that are 
already familiar to me, stand out distinctly, and are 
sharply defined; and they show themselves, not In the 
glimmer or in the blaze of a vague phosphorescence, 
but in the every-day sober sunlight of this present 
world. If I carry myself back, as I may easily do, 
to that Garden under the walls of Jerusalem where- 
in was a sepulchre, or enter an upper chamber, 
within the city, or go on to a house a sabbath- 
day's journey, south of it; or travel so far as to 
the shore of the lake of Galilee; if I go thither 
taking with me no haze of exaggeration, I there find 
Him who is at once the Representative of the human 
family, and its Sponsor; and I find Him such* after 
the suffering of death, as He was before it — save his 
recent scars. The immortality, therefore, which is 
held before me in the Christian scheme, is no such 
thing as a nucleus of conscious mist, floating about in 
a golden fog, amid millions of the same purposeless, 
limbless sparks. It is an immortality of organized 
material energies; — it is the same welded mind-and- 
matter human nature — fitted for service — apt to labour, 
and capable of all those experiences, and furnished 
for all those enterprises, and armed for those endur- 
ances which, seeing that they are thus provided for, 
and are, as one may say, thus foreshown in the Chris- 
tian resurrection, put before me a rational solution — 
hypothetic indeed, and yet not illusory — of those now 
immanent trials, of those hard experiences, of those 
frustrated labours, and of those fiery suff*erings, the 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 343 

passing through which so much perplexes and dis- 
heartens me now ; but which at once find their reason 
when I see them in their intention, as the needed 
schooling for an immortality in the endless fortunes 
of which this mind-and-matter structure shall have 
room to show what things it can do and bear, and 
what enterprises of love it shall devise, and shall bring 
to a happy consummation, it may be, cycles of cen- 
turies hence. 

" The Lord Is risen indeed !" said those simple souls, 
one to another, in that dim morning hour-^which was 
the morning of a Day Eternal to human nature ; and 
He so rises as to throw forward upon the path of this 
human nature, to the remotest range of an endless 
existence, a steady light of reality. 

Over against this reasonable and conceivable Chris- 
tian Idea of the future life, as it is set before me 
in the instance of the Resurrection of Christ, I will 
put the dreamy Elysium of classical antiquity — I will 
put the sensualisms of the oriental beliefs — I will put 
the wearisome and vapid inanities of modem poetical 
or philosophical surmises: — yes, and over against this 
genuine belief I must put those more consistent sup- 
positions which, at this present time, are presenting 
themselves, in a whisper, as probable, if we are to 
follow the guidance of psychological speculation, and 
if we are looking to such a future existence as the 
analogy of things around us might suggest. As com- 
pared with all such anticipations — more or less con- 
sonant as they may severally be with facts known to 



344 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

US — I find that my Christian Belief is more consistent 
than any one of them, is more realizable — is more 
cheering, is more animating, and that it is of a ten- 
dency (when rightly considered) the most healthful, as 
to the moral and the intellectual faculties. 

And '' why should it be thought a thing incredible 
that God should raise the dead?" Every pretext for 
thinking it so, on scientific grounds, has been snatched 
from us by the modern Geology. But that man, 
such as he is — his intellect and his moral nature — 
should cease to exist at death, is indeed an incredible 
supposition ; and yet, if we feel that it is his destiny 
to live anew, then, among all the beliefs to which 
the instincts of our nature have given birth, whether 
in ancient or in modern times, the Christian belief 
of the resurrection of the body, by w^hich we must 
mean — the reconstruction of human nature entire — 
mind and matter — body and soul, is incomparably the 
easiest to conceive of; as it is also the best recom- 
mended by analogies; and, I will boldly say, it is the 
belief to which a genuine philosophy would instantly 
give the preference, if, among the many hypotheses of 
a future stage of human existence which have been 
imagined as probable, it must make a choice. 

Yet it is on no such ground of its abstract credi- 
bility, that this fundamental fact of the Christian life 
is accepted by those in whom that life has indeed had 
its commencement. As to those of them who are in- 
formed and intelligent, they can at all times fall back 
upon that body of evidence which secures them against 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 345 

disbelief. But going far beyond any such merely in- 
tellectual persuasion, Christ's true disciples have a 
sense of the import of His resurrection which renders 
them — except as towards others, indifferent to logical 
methods of proof. Ask them for a reason of their 
faith, and they can well meet the challenge ; but 
having done so, they retire to a ground of conscious- 
ness concerning which no distinct conveyance can be 
made from mind to mind, through the medium of 
language. Verbal propositions do not represent those 
intuitions within the circle of which this conviction 
takes place. 

In vain you say that the supernatural, even If you 
were to grant it to be real, is a remote fact which 
can have no bearing upon our individual feelings at 
this time. You will not bring me to think so while I 
believe that Christ's resurrection, apart from the mean- 
ing which it carries as to the futm'ity of all men, is the 
proof — as it is the consequence, of the efficacy of His 
vicarious death in securing for us, individually, the re- 
mission of sins, and the blessedness of that future life. 

It is at this point that w^e touch the real matter in 
debate among the various theological controversies of 
the present time. If this point be determined, then 
the several articles of religious belief must follow, 
in their order, with little question. But while this is 
undetermined, no argumentation avails to bring such 
controversies to a conclusion. 

What interpretation is it which we allow ourselves 
to put upon the admitted fact of the disordered cou- 



346 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

dition of human nature? Is wrong right — seen under 
another aspect, or from a loftier point of view? Are 
crimes misfortunes? Is sin a mistake? The answer 
we give to questions of this kind — and they may be 
indefinitely varied, involves the whole argument con- 
cerning the truth of the Christian system. The Chris- 
tian, leaving the Atheist, the Pantheist, the antichris- 
tian Theist, and the would-be Christian philosophist to 
make up a reply among themselves — and there is no 
substantial difference among them — has come to his 
own conclusion in this matter. He perfectly under- 
stands, what it might have been supposed all must 
understand — that, to confer with, and to treat man as 
a machine, or as a brute, or to condole with him as 
'' unlucky," but not culpable, is to vilify and degrade 
him still more, and to consign him to a series of hope- 
less descents, until, in fact, he has become a brute, 
and might well wish himself a machine. The Chris- 
tian feels that, cost what it may to the individual, 
the true method of treatment with human nature — the 
hopeful course, and that which indeed lifts him up, 
and does him honour, is to assume that he is in fact 
amenable to the severest law, and should measure him- 
self by the highest standard of purity, rectitude, and 
goodness, which his faculties, intellectual and moral, 
enable him to conceive of, or to comprehend. In 
truth, we need no other evidence in support of the 
principle that man is actually amenable to such a law, 
than this — That when it is placed before him, he 
involuntarily recognises it as abstractedly good. 



THE RESTORATTON OF BELIEF. 347 

The spiritual life then, or the first stage of the life 
eternal, is a recognition of the immutable Law of 
purity, rectitude, and love, not merely as abstractedly 
good, but as good to be applied to man, how dis- 
astrous soever may be the consequences of that ap- 
plication to him in his now actual condition. Better 
were it for him to be condemned by such a law, than 
to find himself viUanously discharged from court on 
the ground that his nature does not admit of the ap- 
plication of a rule so high. Better that he should be 
condemned as guilty, than vilified as pitiable. Better 
for man to endure his doom among beings who have 
fallen from heaven, than that he should take his place 
as the ''most unfortunate" of the mammalia. 

It is manifest that when the individual man has 
reached this point, and has unfeignedly given in his 
adherence to a principle of government to which he 
is obnoxious, the depth and intensity of the emotions 
that thence take their rise will bear proportion, much 
rather to the culture, the refinement, and the sensitive- 
ness of his moral constitution, than to the extent or 
enormity of his personal transgressions. So it is (as 
must seem likely) that those whose course of life has 
been — in the world's eye, blameless, and whose do- 
mestic phase is altogether lovely, often far exceed 
the ostensibly guilty in those feelings of anguish and 
abasement which attend their entrance upon the Chris- 
tian life. Shall we say that such feelings — such agonies, 
are misplaced — are groundless — are morbid? We may 
say it if we wish to mark and notify our own low place 
on the scale of spiritual perception. 



348 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

It Is then as starting from this point that the 
several elements of a Christian belief take their order 
of sequence. It is as occupying this ground — the 
ground at once of humiliation and of hope, that the 
Christian accepts the articles of his Creed — each of 
them as involved in that which precedes it. It is 
thus that he professes his belief in the mystery of the 
Trinity — the Incarnation, and the propitiatory suffer- 
ings and death of Christ; and it is thus, and it is as 
standing in hope of life eternal, that he welcomes the 
assurance of the triumphant resurrection of his Saviour, 
who "having died for our sins, rose again for our 
Justification." 

To many, whose religious feelings are slender, and 
whose faith is mainly conventional, the resurrection of 
Jesus is coolly assented to as a " well authenticated 
fact," carrying with it — of course — the truth of the 
Christian scheme. To Christ's true disciple his rising 
from the dead is of infinitely more moment than any 
such attestation, 

I affirm therefore that proposition with which I set 
out, That the Supernatural, as we find it in the 
Christian Scriptures, is not merely an attestation of 
the truth of the system, as a Eevelation from God; 
but is the ground and reason of that hope of immor- 
tality which is the life of the soul. 



THE THIRD INTENTION OF CHRIST'S MISSION^ AB 
ATTESTED BY MIRACLES. 

In entering upon this ground I must be under- 
stood as not attempting to meet all possible objections, 
or even to satisfy every reasonable doubt : all I ask is, 
that those with whom I may suppose myself to be in 
converse are of serious mood ; and I suppose them to 
admit that the Christian system, such as we find it 
in the books of the New Testament, rightfully com- 
mands the thoughtful regard of every well-constituted 
mind; and also — That, as we find in these memoirs 
an historical consistency, or Individual Congruity, 
which is of a very peculiar kind, it must be reasonable 
to follow it up as a safe guidance, and to pursue this 
oneness of the Personal Idea as far as it will carry 
us; even although it may lead us to carry our 
thoughts beyond the boundary of this visible mundane 
scene. 

I do not hesitate to make this demand, nor to ask 
the thoughtful to accompany me a few paces forward 
upon this dim road. What, in fact, is the initial sup- 
position on the ground of which we consent, at all, to 
listen to Christ as the Teacher of things which can 



350 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

be authentically known by man only through the aid 
of a Revelation from Heaven? Plainly it is this, that 
the things of the "three score years and ten" — the 
things "seen and temporal" — the things that "perish 
in the using," are far from including all that we have 
to do with while these few years are running out; or 
in other words, in surrendering ourselves, in any de- 
gree, to the Christian argument, we implicitly grant, 
that the Human Family stands related, not merely to 
the Creator and Ruler of all things; but to a great 
scheme of Universal Government, which is developing 
itself slowly — and in part, now, and here ; — more fully 
hereafter, and elsewhere. 

But if we grant so much as this, it necessarily 
follows that He who, on entering upon this earthly 
platform, professes that He comes forth from a higher 
and a wider region of the Universal Government, and 
declares Himself to be conversant with, and to be per- 
fectly informed concerning, the transactions and the 
persons of that higher stage of things, should, in His 
discourses, and still more in His acts and course of 
conduct, give indications of the same, which can be 
intelligible only on the supposition here asked for. 

Such a Visitor from a foreign world may either 
discourse at large concerning the things, the persons, 
and the transactions of that world ; or He may observe 
a rigid reserve on every subject of that class. Christ 
does not take the first of these courses; He does not 
freely and copiously speak concerning a supermundane 
system ; but neither is His reserve absolute. He utters 



THE RESTOKATION OF BELIEF. 351 

himself thereupon in a very distinct, and in a peremp- 
tory manner; but He goes no further: — He gives no 
narratives, He relates no incidents; — He says nothing 
that might either tempt conjecture or stimulate cu- 
riosity. Yet it is quite certain that a recollection, on 
our part, of Christ's professed relationship to orders of 
being not of the human family, is indispensable to our 
completing our idea of his Person, as interiorly co- 
herent and consistent. Let me again, and with em- 
phasis, use that comprehensive word — CONGRUITY, and 
affirm that, whereas this majestic harmony of the 
moral ingredients of Christ's individual character — this 
fitness and symmetry, which — if we make allowance 
for the inconceivable obliquities of a few minds — has 
always subdued, as it does now subdue the minds of 
men, and does win their reverential affection — this 
perfect consistency, intellectual and moral, would be 
marred if we were to set off from our conception of 
His character this, His hypothetic relationship to orders 
of being that are not of this family. 

Does not that conception of Christ's demeanour and 
style which we gather from the four Gospels — does it 
not include the idea that we are in the presence of 
one who is acting at the impulse of a purpose deep- 
hidden in his own bosom? Does it not seem that he 
has a consciousness of facts, in which the men about 
him are not sharers? Does he not move forward as 
if he were bringing about ends remote from the proxi- 
mate intention of what he says and does? Christ's 
acts are frequently, or seem to be so — incidental to 



352 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

to his principal purpose : His teachings are fragment- 
ary, because the bearing of his doctrine Is shared 
between this — the visible world, and another world. 
His miraculous Interpositions for the relief of human 
suffering appear to have been prompted, at the mo- 
ment, by human Impulses of compassion ; but they are 
done as If he deflected, for the time, from his course 
in performing them. Does not the Saviour of the 
world walk the earth, and make his way through the 
crowd, as one whose eye Is fixed upon objects beyond 
its horizon? 

If, in an attempted explication of Christ's language 
in relation to a spiritual system, we adopt the meagre 
hypothesis of supposing that He adapts himself, by 
accommodation, to the superstitious belief of the 
Jewish people of that age, what we do is not merely 
to abate our confidence in his sincerity as a Teacher; 
but we remove from the historical conception of his 
character a set of facts, the reality of which is indis- 
pensable to its completeness. It is then chiefly on 
this ground that I feel it to be unavoidable to un- 
derstand his language, when cencerned with an in- 
visible world, as carrying a meaning that is literally 
true. 

Assuming so much as this, then what it comes to, 
expressed in the fewest words, is this — That the his- 
tory and destinies of the Human Family have become 
(if the word may be allowed) entangled with the history 
and the destinies of tribes or orders, partakers with it 
of intelligence, and moral consciousness, and liberty of 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 353 

will; but subject to another administrative economy, 
and not included in the same remedial dispensation. 

The conseque7ices of a belief such as this, whether 
imaginary or real, are nothing to me: it may be 
of ill-tendency; and I am sorry if it be so, but my 
sorrowing will not make facts other than they are. 
Can I walk about this world — can I make my way 
through the streets of towns — can I enter the dens 
that constitute some of those streets, and then persuade 
myself that a supposition of this kind is abstractedly, 
or that it is theologically incredible ? Alas ! this must 
not be said. The customary pretexts of scepticism 
in relation to subjects of this class belong to a period 
now drawing to its close — or passed already ; a period 
of shallow and frivolous thinking — a period when the 
actual condition of a large portion of the human race 
—imperfectly known, and little thought of, and less 
cared for, had no appreciable influence upon systems 
of opinion. Theories of human nature were put to- 
gether in closets to be banded about in saloons. But 
what correspondence had these scented things with 
that real world into the core of which our modern 
philanthropy has carried our feet? 

I think that a revolution has already made great 
progress which, in its issue, shall bring about a far 
more deeply-toned belief, as to the spiritual world, and 
as to the destinies of man, than has ever jet taken 
hold of the human mind : and thus if Superstition has 
tyrannized the ages that are past, a quelling conscious- 
ness of awful realities shall rule the future. 

AA 



354 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

It Is Christianity that has given the initiative in 
this revolution ; and it is the same that shall draw the 
genuine conclusion ; but we shall be carried through 
the intermediate stages of the process by the Atheism 
of the present time, which has the nerve to do what 
itself only could do. A belief in the bearing of the 
Christian scheme upon a wider circle than that of the 
human family must carry with it an admission of its 
supernatural attestations; and toward such an admis- 
sion we are tending — the modern Atheism giving us 
just now a propulsive aid. 

But it may be asked — Are we not receding from 
the field of modern intelligence, and going back to 
the ground of the " dark and pernicious credulity'' — 
which belong to an age of ignorance ? I do not ask 
whether the objects before me are such as an ignorant 
age will delight in ; or whether a belief concerning them 
be of bad influence, or otherwise. It is certain that the 
human mind has universally entertained suppositions of 
this kind ; and therefore there must be a ground for 
them. I wish there were no ground for them, but there 
is ; and nothing is gained by refusing to see it. There 
would, in truth, be a powerful motive for ridding our- 
selves of the appalling idea, of a Personal Satan, and 
of his hosts, if, in renouncing the " Superstition," we 
could also dispel the '^ darkness." But we cannot do 
so ; on the contrary, if we refuse to admit this article 
into our pneumatology, as matter of history — then the 
" darkness" which shrouds the world thickens around 
us so much the more, and becomes indeed a ''thick 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 355 

darkness," for it is then a gloom, without a gleam. 
So long as we retain an hypothesis which connects the 
history and destinies of the human race with another 
history, and with other destinies, we retain also, in 
some manner, though it be wholly undefined, a sort of 
hold upon the future: — for we then know that there 
is a course of events in progress, which may issue, we 
know not how, for the better. As on the one hand 
there can scarcely be a greater mistake than that of 
supposing the ancient problem of the origin of evil 
to be in any way solved, or the mystery in the least 
degree cleared up, by carrying it back to the epoch 
of the Satanic rebellion; yet, on the other hand, the 
inroad of sin and woe upon the human family comes 
to wear a different aspect when it is thought of in 
connection with this supposition. So thought of, it 
is at once brought Into relationship with that scheme 
which is seen to be unfolding itself from the first page 
to the last of the Canonical Books. Seen from the 
position into which we are insensibly led by following 
this series of writers, the evil that is in this world, 
and its attendant misery, fall into perspective, and 
exhibit, at least, so much of coherence as may result 
from their relation to a scheme within which truth 
and order reign supreme, and upon which a light, 
though it be only a glimmer, does shine. 

Especially it is as seen from this position that the 
personal behaviour of Christ, and that the professed 
intention of His mission toward man become intel- 
ligible; for, to think of Him merely as the Teacher 

AA2 



356 THE RESTORATION^ OF BELIEF. 

of a pure morality, and as the author of beneficial 
secular maxims, leaves the greater part of His conduct, 
and of his teaching, unaccounted for. To think of 
Him further as the Redeemer of His people, though 
it supplies much of what is needed to give a meaning 
to both — His behaviour and His teaching, still leaves 
as much unaccounted for, and the clue to this we do 
not find until we accept, in a literal sense, what is 
declared concerning the Christ of God as He who 
should drive the Usurper and Tyrant from the world 
he has invaded. 

This might seem the point at which a writer — 
intending to propitiate opponents, and to smooth a 
path from Disbelief to Christian Faith — would intro- 
duce some hitherto unthought-of hypothesis concern- 
ing the universality of Redemption, or the possible 
modes in which things future, which we find to be 
inconceivable, may yet be conceived of. I am about 
to attempt nothing of this sort. The notorious failure, 
hitherto, of all such endeavours from the time of Origen 
to this, might well be warning enough not to venture 
a step on ground where there is no footing. One 
scheme after another has broken down — and neces- 
sarily so, because these mitigative theories still include 
much more than those will allow who, on this very 
account, reject Christianity ; and they assume much 
for which a Christian man, who would fain find it, 
finds no warrant in the written Revelation; and if 
not, how shall he dare to add to that word, or to 
strike off from it the least particle? 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 357 

The easily recognized characteristics of undigested 
thinking — of reasonings prompted by a predetermined 
issue, and which are reckless of evidence, attach, as 
I think, to every one of the hypotheses of universal 
restitution which have been advanced by men pro- 
fessing to respect the authority of Scripture. In the 
regions of Science — reasonings of the same class — 
the products of the very same order of minds, come 
under the familiar designation of quackeiy: — a dozen 
philosophies of this sort are just now courting ephe- 
meral notoriety. The gravity of the subject now in 
hand should preclude the employment of this collo- 
quial phrase; — otherwise it would very fitly designate 
these spurious schemes, one and all. In a sound mind 
the momentary solace which attends a first listening 
to a scheme of this sort, is quickly followed by a 
profound dissatisfaction, which leaves us in more dis- 
comfort than before. 

If then we reject, as I think we must, the miti- 
gative theories that have been devised for reconciling 
our notions of the Divine Benevolence, as related to 
the destinies of the family of man, with facts and with 
articles of our faith, what do we bring forward in the 
place of them for the purpose of assuaging that state 
of distress and perplexity toward which we are always 
advancing, just in proportion as we steadily think of 
what is around us, and look forward to the future in 
serious mood? 

Although it be confessed that there is no hypothesis 
of this sort in reserve which a Christian man can bring 



358 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

forward; nevertheless there are considerations to which 
a belief in the literal — or we may say, the historical 
meaning of certain narratives in the Gospels gives rise, 
and which are of high importance for maintaining a 
religious temper. They are such as these. — In the 
first place, the interpretation which we ought to put 
upon Christ's language and conduct, wherever He had 
to do with those who are spoken of as possessed by 
unclean spirits or " demons" carries the supposition 
that the relation in which He stood toward beings of 
this class was essentially unlike that which He sus- 
tained toward the human race. This marked dissimi- 
larity is strongly implied in various ways. — The pas- 
sionate utterances of these beings (unlike as they are 
to the ravings of maniacs) were in no case expressive 
either of hope or of submission : they bespoke a well- 
understood and an inveterate hostility: — these excla- 
mations, and these sudden recognitions, speak volumes 
of history — a history that runs far back into the cycles 
of duration past; — and it is a history of which there 
are chapters not yet opened. On the part of Christ 
there is indicated nothing but a corresponding and a 
settled adverse feeling w^hich has no reserves, and no 
purpose of relenting. 

If we go so far as this, then the inference is irre- 
sistible, that there may be within the universal govern- 
ment of God, and that there is, in fact — open, con- 
scious, and hopeless rebellion. It Is true that Abstract 
Theism might show cause for refusing to admit a sup- 
position so appalling as this; — but can we indeed walk 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 359 

the streets of this world — and profess to think it in- 
credible ? — Alas ! it must be granted to be possible — 
and more than possible. But if there be, as we now 
say, open and determinate rebellion within the realm 
of God's government, and if it borders upon us too — 
and if states of mind which nearly resemble such a 
desperate perversion, are facts, attaching even to the 
human system, then must there be ground for a fear 
— a fear which the ordinary proceedings of human 
governments show to be reasonable, of this sort : — when 
rebellion is rife in a country^ it is certain that men 
who are, in many respects, worthy citizens, may easily 
come to be fatally compromised with it, and may find 
themselves in the end consorted with the worst of 
criminals, and sharing the same fate. 

Again : If facts be as we are now supposing, then 
we get a means of rightly interpreting a large part 
of that discipline which we are undergoing in the 
present state. The ulterior purpose of that severe 
training through the stages of which some, if not all, 
are passing, and which constitutes the individual his- 
tory of some men from the earliest development of 
reason to the last hour of life, is, as it seems, the 
formation of a firm principle of religious loyalty — an 
enduring acquiescence in the procedures of the Divine 
Government — a principle so fixedly wrought into the 
soul as that it may stand trial under conditions the 
most difficult that can be imagined — not only of the 
life now present, but of the future life. Why the 
entire schooling of a seventy years has been, to some 



360 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 



men, what it has been, becomes at once intelligible if 
we admit the supposition that, in the life future, with 
its incalculable revolutions, such spirits, thus tried and 
proved as they have been, shall be challenged to un- 
dertake services in relation to which this immoveable 
loyalty shall find its sphere, and shall be nothing more, 
as to its iron nerve, than those great occasions shall 
be found to demand. 

Suppositions of *this kind may very ill comport with 
the notions of many good people about Heaven— and 
which notions we may grant to be right in substance 
though wrong in form; but I think they will seem 
not unfounded when, in the next age, Scriptural 
Interpretation shall be unshackled, and shall speak 
out the full meaning of the Inspired Text. Mean- 
time I admit no element into my anticipations of the 
future life which I do not see to be distinctly sym- 
bolized now, in the course of the Divine administration 
toward individual men. Every Sunday, in professing 
aloud that "I look for the resurrection of the dead, 
and the life of the world to come," I understand the 
" w-orld to come" to be such a w^orld as that the pre- 
sent world shall be a fit preparation for its labours, 
and for its endurances, and for its trials of religious 
constancy. 

Again : If we admit, in their obvious and historic 
sense, those of the Evangelic narratives which relate 
to demoniacal possessions, the Supernatural element 
therein implied supports an inference which, when in 
the fewest words, and with the utmost caution, we 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 361 

have enounced it, should be left to carry Its meaning 
home Into our hearts, without our attempting to follow 
It out Into consequences — we know not what, and for 
which we have not sufficient warrant, or none at all. 

— The entire series of miracles wrought by Christ 
during the years of His public ministry had — as toward 
mankind — as well a benevolent Intention, as a beneficent 
Issue. This fact Is the more to be noted because It 
forms a point of distinction between Christ's miracles 
and those of His ministers, as related In the Book of 
the Acts — several of which were administrative and 
pimltlve. But no such use was made of miraculous 
powers by Him who declares that He came Into the 
world "not to destroy men's lives, but to save them." 
In striking contrast with this rule of the Supernatural, 
as It Is seen to govern the Saviour's conduct toward 
men. Is the rule which manifests Itself as often as He 
encountered beings of another order, or of another 
derivation. In every such Instance, the word of power 
carried with It Law, not Mercy: — It was not ven- 
geance; but It was reprehension and repulse: — the 
Implied meaning was ever the same — "Keep your 
bounds — go back." 

If It be asked — What then Is your further Inference ? 
I am prepared with no answer ; yet there Is before me 
a conspicuous fact — there Is here a difference ; there 
Is a distinction; and this fact, which I know not how 
to unfold, consists well with the belief which I gather up 
from many scattered notices, strewn over the canonical 
pages, and the purport of which Is that the Mission of 



362 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Christ — the Son of God, and Saviour of the world — 
was to overthrow a usurpation, and to drive the Tyrant 
from the field he has invaded; and I further gather 
this truth, that, in carrying forward this purpose, He 
shall not fail, but shall triumph ; for it is said of Him, 
that '' He shall lead captivity captive." This is my 
resting-place ; — it is not indeed a place of sunshine ; 
but It is as a " covert from the storm." 

Let it not be said, or imagined, that, in adducing 
considerations of this sort, the intention is to solve 
problems, or to clear up mysteries: — we may hold it 
for certain that no considerations coming within the 
range of the human mind, can avail for any such 
purpose. But what may be looked for, as the fruit 
of these trains of thought, is this — namely, a giving 
coherence and consistency to many insulated passages 
of Scripture; and more than this — the rendering an 
aid to meditation when we are endeavouring to com- 
plete our conceptions of the Saviour Christ, as the 
Deliverer of man. A principal element of that Idea 
— absolutely unique as it is, is supplied when we duly 
regard His ministry as it is related, on the one hand 
to the victims of a usurpation; and on the other 
hand, to its Chief and His adherents. 



THE CYCLES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

At this moment a lengthened period of social tran- 
quillity seems to have come to Its end ; and, as to the 
western and cultured races, It has been peculiarly favor- 
able to those reactions of the mind upon Itself which 
are natural to It, and beneficial. In their ultimate re- 
sults; but for which no leisure Is found in seasons of 
national or political excitement. We are entering 
perhaps upon a period of arduous struggles, of great 
enterprises, of great trials, and of sufferings as great. 
A period may be before us — not for amusing our- 
selves with Ingenious paradoxes, not for dressing up 
philosophic schemes of opinion ; but for daring, and 
for doing, and for enduring, whatever energetic men 
may devise, achieve, and bear. The ingenious writers, 
therefore, who, with so much zeal, ability, and vehe- 
mence, have been labouring, of late years, to rid 
themselves and the world of Christianity, may find 
that their day Is gone by — and that It must be their 
sons, or their grandsons, who shall return to this 
Crusade, in some future time of repose, like the past. 
At this time, not only will men of action have no ear 
for bootless subtlltles; but such men will feel their 



364 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

need, personally, of principles that are already authen- 
ticated, and not now to be sought for and elaborated 
In closets. Men of action, who will have much to 
suffer, as well as to do, will ask for grounds of re- 
ligious hope and solace which time has consolidated, 
and on which the good, the wise, the great, of all ages, 
have been wont to rest in their hour of trial. The 
Christian Belief shall again, as heretofore, be found to 
meet the need of humanity in the years that are before 
us — years — not of dreams, but of realities. 

As to the apostles of the modem impiety — Athe- 
istic, and Theistic, and Pantheistic, — although their 
enterprise has failed for the present, and although 
their hopes are dashed, they may console themselves 
with the thought that — if not to them, to their suc- 
cessors, another opportunity shall arise for labouring 
on the same stony field. The Christian system will 
itself evolve principles that necessitate these periodic 
struggles, and that give them force; and at each 
return with augmented force. 

At this time what is of more importance, and what 
would be more fruitful of good than any imaginable 
triumph over Infidelity — on the field of argument, 
would be a wise preparation, on the part of the Chris- 
tian community, for that next coming season when 
the Gospel must anew pass through a crisis of mortal 
intensity, A main part of such a preparation would 
consist in knowing clearly whence such an intestinal 
conflict springs, and toward what issue it tends. 

In aflSrming the Christian origination of the recent 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 365 

Infidelity and Atheism, it is needful to distinguish 
between those deep-seated sequences of thought which 
we have just now in view, and those obvious and in- 
cidental effects of patent causes which might have 
been other than they are, and which may or may not 
bear upon a future time. The fact is not to be ques- 
tioned that much of the Disbelief which floats around 
us, and which poisons the atmosphere of towns, takes 
its occasion, or derives its power, from what it finds 
that is wrong, or absurd, or merely conventional, in 
the Christianity of Christian people. Materials of this 
sort are rife always, so that men of acrid temper are 
never at a loss when looking about for occasions of 
that scorn which they would fain heap upon the 
Gospel. There is a plenty of Disbelief which springs 
up, rank, about sacred edifices; but what we have to 
do with at this time is — a Spectre that rises from the 
Adytum. 

The Atheism of this age has a depth which is its 
own only because it has sent its line down into that 
abyss of which Christianity withdraws, in part, the 
veil. This Atheism displays a grandeur which is not 
its own, but which it assumes in rearing its head, and 
looking upward, beneath the vault of that Infinitude 
to which it has gained admittance by favour of the 
Gospel. This Atheism shows, and actually possesses, 
a sensibility, and it has a consciousness of the true, 
the beautiful, and the good, which it owes, conspicu- 
ously and entirely, to the books and to the system 
which it denounces. These tones of tenderness and of 



366 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

purity in which it has learned to utter itself — if we 
catch them at a distance, so as to lose what in them 
is articulate, might be mistaken for the silver sounds 
of God's mercy to man. 

The Atheism which startles us by our fireside, 
which sits with us in pews, which flames out in our 
literature, which is the Apollo of the weekly, monthly, 
and quarterly Press, has not merely learned its rhetoric 
in the evangelic school, and thence stolen its phrases, 
but it has there got inspiration from a Theology of 
which itself Is only the necessary antithesis. Evoke 
now from Hades a genuine Atheist of the classic Pagan 
Church, and bring him within hearing of a modern 
Atheistic lecture, and the very terms of the discourse 
would be unintelligible to him. You must baptize him 
before you can convince him that you are his disciples, 
or that he is indeed one of yourselves. The Creed 
in which he lived and died was a marble paradox, and 
you have a great work to do in him before he can 
be made to listen to a breathing sophistry, with its 
Christianized heart, and its soul of fire. An Atheistic 
philosophy which is indeed earthborn, and which steams 
up from the dead levels of the Pagan world, is a 
miasma, in breathing which nations are overcome with 
drowsiness — intellectual and moral, and walk about 
dreaming, thousands of years, unchanged. But a Chris- 
tian-born Atheistic philosophy comes over a Christian 
land, at periods, as a cloud, riding upon the winds — 
it mutters blasphemies — it smites the earth with its 
forked scourge, and It moves away. 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 367 

The very same body of facts concerning the woes 
and disorders — hopeless as they are, and purposeless 
as they seem, which press upon humanity — these 
facts, rudely regarded by the sages of pagan antiquity, 
and which impelled them to reject the hypothesis of 
a Supreme wisdom, benevolence, and power — come 
before us now, unchanged or scarcely mitigated, and 
they not merely perplex the reason — they do more, 
they distract us, because we have been long trained in 
the meditative converse with an Idea of the Supreme 
Wisdom, Benevolence, and Power, immeasurably sur- 
passing any conception of these attributes which the 
ancient mind had ever entertained. That which was 
an insoluble problem to the ancient classic reason, is 
also, to the modern mind, a problem insoluble; — but 
it is more than an intellectual stumblingblock, for it 
puts at fault our consciousness of first Truths. 

Moreover, while Christianity has, to so vast an ex- 
tent, enlarged our religious conceptions, and has taught 
us to think so much more profoundly, and more justly 
in whatever touches our higher nature, the advances 
of Science, which in a manner expand our conscious- 
ness over the fields of infinite space and time, help to 
impart an awful intensity to every subject that has 
any theologic aspect. Then the same Gospel which 
penetrates our souls with warm emotions — dispersive 
of selfishness, brings in upon the heart a sympathy 
that tempts us often to wish that itself were not 
true ; or that it had not taught us so to feel. At these 
points then we come upon an interior antagonism — a 



368 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

deep counteractive energy, whence springs almost with 
periodic regularity — a disbelief of which Christianity 
Is the Immediate object, Inasmuch as It Is Its Incltatlve 
cause. 

During a period of repose, such as that which we 
have passed through, the Christian system. Its doctrines 
and Its moral energies, working freely upon a people 
whose mind and speech submit to no censorship, pro- 
duces eflfects of two kinds — the one being the antithesis 
of the other. The first of these Is the product of Its 
own proper Influence, which Is to refine and enhance 
the humanizing sensibilities of the people, in their re- 
spective classes: — many of the highest will be seen 
to signalize themselves in courses of self-denying and 
truly noble philanthropy ; while the lowest class, to 
some extent, are weened from their rudeness and their 
ferocity. At the same time the large middle class 
becomes alive to whatever touches the wellbeing of 
mankind, near at home, and afar off, and tax them- 
selves heavily to give effect to many generous enter- 
prises. In effecting these ameliorations Christianity 
shines with its own light, and shows its derivation 
from a world of love and order. 

Also, and at the same time, and because the minds 
of men are at leisure, that reflective and medita- 
tive sensitiveness of which Christianity is the source, 
and which it so much cherishes, and favours, evolves 
adverse theories, and gives birth to schemes of Chris- 
tianized philosophy (first within the pale of the 
Church) and then of antlchrlstlan philosophy, beyond 



THE EESTORATION OF BELIEF. 369 

those limits. From this same perplexed meditation 
spring, in their ancient order of sequence, Pantheistic 
and Atheistic schemes, which might be spoken of as 
the Congestion of thought in minds, often of fine 
mould, though not the most robust. Take two men of 
equally humane temperament, and train both of them 
under Christian influences, and lead them both, day 
after day, through scenes of human degradation and 
wretchedness : — the one of them whose structure of 
mind is the most ordinary, and also the most healthy, 
will addict himself, forthwith, to some instituted labour 
of Christian benevolence, and he finds himself, though 
much worn, yet happy in his path of toil. The other, 
and who is intellectually the choice sample of the 
two, deeply ponders what he sees: — he thinks, till he 
becomes miserable ; — he throws up his religious pro- 
fession, and wildly looks round for some doctrine or a 
theory that may assuage his anguish: — he finds no 
such doctrine, and the collapse of conflicting feelings 
leaves him — without God, and without hope in the 
world. Deprive the first of these men of his Christian 
belief, and of his Christian motives and hopes, and 
he w^ill presently "faint and be weary" in his work. 
But withdraw from the mind of the other those lofty 
conceptions of the Supreme Wisdom and Goodness 
which he received at first from Christianity, and he 
would quickly find himself able to turn away from 
scenes of human misery with frivolous indifference. 

We may be sure that whenever Christianity has so 
far wrought itself into the mind of a people as to give 

B B 



370 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

existence among them to many self-denying enterprises 
of benevolence, and to sustain these labours In vigour 
from year to year, It will also have produced a re- 
action, within the same community, uttering Itself con- 
cerning the evils that abound in the social system In 
tones, which at first are querulous — then ferocious, and 
at last blasphemous. If on all sides of us there are 
penitentiaries — reformatory prisons — missions among 
cannibals — and those latest efflorescences of Christian 
love — ragged schools — then there will also be heard 
lecturers and writers, some of them men of genius, 
who, beginning their career as humane reformers, end 
It as murky misanthropic Atheists. Just as the pains 
and troubles of a man's Individual lot may drive him to 
snatch at the knife or poison of the suicide, so may the 
anguish and the despair with which a sensitive heart 
contemplates the miseries that are in the world Impel 
him to open the veins of the immortal spirit, and let 
go forth the life-blood of the soul. 

This Is that sifting of spirits — this Is that fiery 
trial which, with a peculiar Intensity, Is going on 
at this time, and is putting to the severest proof the 
loyalty — the religious allegiance, of many minds born 
and trained within the pale of Christian Influence. To 
each of us, in a more or less pointed manner, the 
critical question Is now put whether we will stand by 
Heaven — by Truth — by Goodness; or will range our- 
selves with primaeval rebellion, and be compromised 
with those whose quarrel with God may be older than 
the mountains? 



1 



THE RESTOKATION OF BELIEF, 371 

This trial of constancy is now severe; but a time 
is inevitable when it will have become more so. One 
need not be gifted with a prophet's eye to foresee this : 
for it is a course of things — it is an issue, that is in- 
volved in the present condition and tendencies at once 
of religious feeling, and of Abstract Thought. 

Those who, by God's help, have survived (in a 
religious sense) a conflict of this kind, eagerly turn 
to the Evangelic records of Christ's discourses, that 
they may discover if He has made any provision — 
or if so, what provision, for securing the tranquillity 
of those who ''believe and are sure" that He is the 
true interpreter of God's ways toward men. How is 
it that this '' Physician of souls" goes about to heal 
the deep wounds of those whose wounds have touched 
the immortal life? We cannot open the Gospels with- 
out acknowledging that the lips of this Teacher breathe 
love and peace — health and power, as well as wisdom. 
May we not therefore confidently look to Him for the 
resolution of our perplexities — for the solving of dis- 
tracting problems? will He not shed some light upon 
the dark mysteries of this world? He does nothing 
of that sort which we so much desire ! He is fixedly 
abstinent in relation even to subjects which the Jewish 
mind of that age had become in some degree alive to. 
He does not propound the main articles of a Theistic 
belief, or speak of them as if they needed to be 
ascertained or defended. Much less does He recog- 
nize, as if they were a burden upon that belief, the 
staggering difficulties which oppress us, of this age, 

BB2 



372 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

and with which the thoughtful in all times have so 
vainly striven. That heavy load of troubled specu- 
lation which weighs us down, does not seem to have 
come into His view when He invites the weary to 
seek their rest in Him. This '' Man of sorrows," and 
'' acquainted with griefs," gives no expression to those 
griefs which, to many of the thoughtful and sensitive 
among His followers, have outweighed the pressure 
of the most extreme personal sufferings, so that they 
have been tempted to say — ''I am indeed afflicted — 
yet would endure all with cheerfulness, if the thick 
darkness that overspreads these heavens were with- 
drawn, or if only I could see a verge of the dawn 
upon the cloud." 

On one occasion, when a perplexity nearly of this 
class stood out suddenly in His view, there is heard 
from His lips a singular outburst of devout exultation 
— " I thank Thee, Father" — which in no way chimes 
in with our modern comfortless feeling. When, from 
the ridge of Olivet, He wept over the doomed city — 
its palaces and Temple, His sorrow was of that sort 
which resembles the spontaneous grief of a parent, 
who foresees the miseries that are in store for a re- 
bellious child: — the trouble was of the concrete, not 
of the abstract kind. 

And yet if we do not find in the teaching of Christ 
that which we should so gladly find, we find at least 
the rudiments of peace, and a remedy against distrac- 
tion, which, if we will accept it and use it, brings with 
it as much acquiescence as is to be had, in the nature 



THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 373 

of things, on earth; — and as much, perhaps, as is 
to be found even among those that have encircled 
the Eternal Throne since the mornmg hours of the 
Creation. 

If there presents itself — and such a surmise will 
present itself, a surmise of this kind — That the terms 
and phrases which are employed by the Canonical 
writers when they speak of the Divine attributes of 
Wisdom, Goodness, Love, are used, as of necessity^ 
because there are none others; but that these terms 
must not be so understood or so interpreted by us, 
as would bring them into parallelism with our finite 
conceptions, or with any human modes of thinking and 
of feeling, and which would warrant the free outflow of 
our sympathies in harmony with our religious beliefs ; — 
if we are thus tempted to think, then a suspicion so 
disheartening is dispelled when we consent to listen to 
Christ as what He declares himself to be — namely, not 
merely a Messenger, sent by God to man, but far more 
than this — the Living Representative of the Divine 
Nature, so far as the Infinite Mind can become cog- 
nizable by the finite mind. Now as Representative 
of God among men, we hear Him say — " He that hath 
seen me, hath seen the Father also," and it is certain 
that what are called the moral attributes, are, in a 
much ampler sense cognizable by us than the natural 
attributes can be. It is not merely that Christ, au- 
thenticating His message by miracles, teaches us with 
authority concerning God; but He treads the earth as 
the genuine Image of the Invisible God; — and as 



374 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

such, He assures us that the Universe is one, In Its 
moral constitution — that the language of Heaven Is 
literally Interpretable among men — word for word ; 
and that whatever marvels might surprise us In travers- 
ing the skies, we should eveiywhere find ourselves at 
home, as to our moral intuitions. The language In 
which we embody our notions of the True, the Right, 
the Good, the Loving, is not a dialect of this pro- 
vince ; but It Is the universal style of God's kingdom 
in all places. 

Precisely therefore as we. If we be humane, are 
prompted to ''do good to all, even to the evil and the 
unthankful," so, and with a feeling strictly analogous to 
this, does the Father of all dispense His benefits. In 
a sense corresponding to our own consciousness — He Is 
righteous In His administration — He Is no respecter of 
persons — He is merciful — compassionate — slow to anger 
— ready to forgive — and a Hearer of prayer. But 
He Is firm of purpose, tine to His word, and sure to 
give effect to whatever originates with Himself. The 
Saviour Christ does not in words vindicate the ways 
of God to men ; but better than this. He stands before 
us as a Living Theodicaea — an Intelligible expression 
of those attributes of the Divine Nature which carry 
with them. If not an Implicit solution of the dark 
mysteries of the moral system, yet an antidote to 
the fatal effect they might have upon our minds; and 
this Is certain, that If there be rebellion In any pro- 
vince of the universe, it Is a resistance to such wisdom, 
such rectitude, and such love, as are brought down to 



THE RESTOEATTON OF BELIEF. 375 

our apprehension in the Person of Christ — the Christ 
of God. 

And yet, if by this means a Theology is set before 
me which commands my approval, something more 
is needed to afford me the intimate satisfaction which 
I need; or at least to convey to my heart a miiform 
peace — a sentiment, as w^ell as a conclusion of the 
reason. I may make progress as to my conceptions 
of the Divine Nature; and yet the further I go in 
assimilating my own state of mind to those concep- 
tions, so much the more does darkness thicken around 
me when I look abroad, and when I tread the crowded 
thoroughfares of this world. It is true that there are 
obvious considerations which, if they be wisely enter- 
tained, suffice for convincing me that those troubles and 
pains that affect myself have been, and are, not more 
than a needful and beneficial discipline, which finds its 
sufficient reason in the wholesome products by which 
I am morally the gainer. But where shall I find the 
shadow of a reason, applicable to the millions of in- 
stances in which the miseries of this life are taking 
effect in no such remedial manner ; but the contrary — 
are the very source and cause of aggravated vice, and 
of deeper and deeper wretchedness? 

At this point it becomes evident that, as the 
ground of a settled religious composure in looking 
abroad upon the human system, such as it is, and 
ever has been, I need something more than hitherto 
I have found. Abstract Theism is serviceable to a 
certain extent; but it leaves me to contend, as I 



376 THE RESTOEATION OF BELIEF. 

may, with formidable surmises, and to abide under the 
shadow of mysteries that have always defied human 
reason. On this ground the brightest lights and the 
darkest shadows — not blended by any diffusive medium, 
show the harshest contrasts. When I advance from 
this ground and come upon the illuminated field of 
the Biblical Theism, there is here indeed both light 
and warmth : nevertheless, as we have just seen, it 
is this very Theism, well defined as it is, and pure, 
which gives a proportionate intensity to the trouble 
that draws its too valid reasons from the spectacle of 
human nature — erring, suffering, and far from hope. 

Where then shall I find peace? Shall I school 
myself in apathy, and resolutely refuse, any more, to 
care for ills w^hich do not infringe upon my personal 
ease and enjoyment? I cannot do this, if I would. 
I dare not persuade myself to assume this insensi- 
bilitv, even toward the million with whom I have no 
tie of near relationship : — how then shall I attempt it 
as toward the few whose welfare is dearer to me than 
my own? Philosophy will not help me. Theistic 
Theories fail me at the very point where I might 
look to them for comfort; nay, they mock me at 
that point. The Theism of the Bible, if it be con- 
sidered abstractedly, renders me tenfold more alive to 
perplexities of this kind than I should have been with- 
out it: — it is the very soul of that consciousness upon 
which the evil and the woe around me so powerfully 
take effect. 

I see before me but one way of peace ; and yet 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 377 

even this is not rest to the Reason, for It does not 
bring with It a clearing awaj of thick clouds ; It Is not 
the opening of a bright azure overhead ; but It Is the 
commencement of a composure which establishes Itself 
In the heart In a spontaneous and gradual manner. 
Devoutly I believe that there Is not In this world (and 
probably not In any other) more than one position In 
occupying which the human mind — If It be sensitive, 
and unselfish, and In every sense alive^ can be ex- 
empted from those distracting perplexities which are 
incompatible with moral health, and which abate vir- 
tuous energy. 

— Already I have listened to Christ as a Teacher 
sent Into the world on God's part, to make known to 
me what I could not otherwise have known. I have 
learned also to regard Him as the Representative of 
the Moral Attributes of God, so that, In contempla- 
tion of Him I acquire a consciousness, as to those 
attributes, which is genuine and trustworthy, and suf- 
ficient too for my guidance and support in the exigencies 
of this life. It remains then that I think of, and live 
in communion with the same Christ as the Faultless 
Man, In whose demeanour, and In whose words and 
actions, I find an Intelligible authentication of every 
emotion, and of every sensibility which I ought to 
allow, and to cherish, as good and reasonable, and as 
truly related, not only to those facts which come 
within my own range of vision ; but to those also 
which lie far beyond it. In the demeanour. In the 
discourses, in the conduct of Christ — the True and 



378 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

Faultless Man, I see reflected, as in a mirror, all 
things of all worlds that touch, or that belong to, the 
moral state and consciousness of the intelligent crea- 
tion — that is to say — all those facts which, if I saw 
and knew them, would affect me with a corresponding 
joy or sorrow. 

It must not be pretended, on the adverse side, that 
the Evangelic Memoirs, containing as they do the 
w^iole that we can now know of Christ, are too frag- 
mentary — too inartificial, and too brief, to warrant my 
deriving from them the comprehensive Personal Idea 
which now I am in search of. Infinitely preferable are 
these fragmentary Gospels, in relation to the purpose 
before me, than would be any imaginable biography, 
framed upon a philosophic principle. In any instance 
where the Individual Man of a past age is to be 
thought of, vividly and correctly, give me genuine 
fragments of his actual life, and of his familiar con- 
verse with his chosen friends, and keep far out of 
my sight the generalizing portraiture which may be 
offered to me by some writer who is more full of 
himself, than of his subject. This is, I think, the 
rule in observance of which the ablest recent writers 
of history have made so great an advance upon the 
practice of their predecessors. The Gospels, rigidly 
analysed on the principles that are now authenticated 
within the department of history, offer to me precisely 
the materials which are the most to be desired, in 
such a case. 

With these materials in my hand — with these 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 379 

sketches — these hints — before me, I come into the 
possession of a conception of the Personal Clirist as 
complete as I have of any personage of the ancient 
epochs. And I acquire this distinct conception not- 
withstanding the fact that this Person is such a one 
as had never before trod the earth, nor has the like 
to Him trod it since. And be it observed that this 
Perfect Idea which has concreted itself in my mind^ 
is not a vague outline of godlike majesty ; but it has 
the vivacity and the intelligible distinctness of a like- 
ness, taken and fixed, at various moments, by some 
infallible and instantaneous process. All things mun- 
dane I must regard as a troubled dream — all history 
must become as an incoherent myth, if it be not cer- 
tain that the Christ of the Gospels is a reality, and 
the incidents of His life in the strictest sense his- 
torical. 

This being so, and as I have on other grounds con- 
vinced myself that this Christ of the Gospels unites in 
His Person the qualities and virtues of human nature 
with the attributes of the Divine nature, I draw near 
to Him in the confidence that 1 shall find indicated 
in His behaviour, in His words, and in His actions, 
those views and sentiments regarding the subjects that 
most perplex me, which, if I could but attain the 
same, would give me composure, at least. While I 
approach Him — even "Jesus, Son of David," thronged 
by the multitude, I see Him as one who is conscious 
of all conditions and states of being — visible and in- 
visible — the past, the present, and the future: — the 



380 THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 

present and the visible must in His view keep their 
proportion, as related to the unseen and the eternal. 

It IS certain that it is not insensibility — it is not 
insensitiveness of temperament, whence springs the se- 
renity of that brow, and the governed calm of that 
countenance. But then, may it not be that, in the 
depths of that unfathomable soul, wherein the weal of 
all creatures is entertained, no regard is had to those 
ills and pains of an hour or a day, the witnessing 
of which moves me to pity, and disturbs my peace? 
If I might be tempted to think so, then I follow the 
course of this Saviour of the world, and note what is 
the quality and the intention of His miracles, from the 
first of them to the last. Now in this series there 
occur not more, at the most, than two or three ex- 
ceptions to the mle, that they were interpositions, 
having for their purpose the relief of bodily suffer- 
ings, or the supply of bodily wants.— They were (with 
these few exceptions) just such acts of spontaneous 
sympathy as my own feelings would prompt me to 
imitate, every day, if I could, when mingling with 
the concourse of crowded cities. In this sense we may 
reverse the Scripture, and say, ^4he mind that is in 
me, was also in Christ Jesus." There was in Him 
compassion on a level with the most ordinary of the 
ills that affect humanity. It was not that, to Him 
before whose eye the immortality of the thousands 
around Him was laid open, their present pains — their 
lameness and palsy, their blindness and deafness, their 
hunger and their thirst and weariness, were of small 



THE RESTORATION OF BELIEF. 381 

or no account. It was not that a forethought of the 
boundless future bred in Him a lofty indifference 
toward pains and ills so ephemeral as those that weigh 
upon mortality. Viewed on this ground, and in rela- 
tion to the inference which I have now in view the 
series of evangelic miracles carries with it a peremp- 
tory conclusion. The case before us is one in which 
the less involves the greater. It is certain that He 
who knows, and who has in his view all that I see 
and know, and far more, and whose emotions of pity 
are like my own— yet far more acute, and uniform- 
has also in His view, such facts, or such prospects as 
are more than sufficient for the double purpose, first 
of securing an habitual composure and tranquillity, and 
then for holding entire an unshaken loyalty toward God 
—the Sovereign Creator and Euler of the universe. 

If now the question be put to me, whether my 
Christian Belief enables me to rid myself of that 
burden of far-reaching care and trouble which I share 
with the thoughtful of all ages— my reply is this— In 
truth I have not found the means of ridding myself 
of this burden ; but in the Gospels I have found Him 
in communion with whom I am learning how to bear 
it ; and thus I hope to bear it to the end, still retain- 
ing my faith and trust in God as supremely Good 
and Wise— ^'a Just God, and a Saviour." 



THE END. 



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